


A (Former) Archangel Walks into a Bar

by legendarytobes



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Avenging Angel, F/F, Michaella, Romance, femmeslash, genderbent, girl!michael, post season five, season 5, season five, season five spec, trigger warning: attempted drink drugging, trigger warning: creepy incels at bars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:20:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26069374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendarytobes/pseuds/legendarytobes
Summary: After his schemes in Los Angeles fail, and his Father takes his wings and goes above and beyond in punishing Michael, the former archangel finds himself stranded on earth and bumming his way around the country, trying to start a life outside of his brothers...far, far awayfrom them in point of fact. That's why while hustling poker in Reno, Nevada, the last thing he expects to see is one Ella Lopez doing something similar with Black Jack. A smarter angel would just walk away. Michael is not a smarter angel...
Relationships: Ella Lopez/Michael
Comments: 119
Kudos: 158





	1. Of All the Gin Joints, in all the World

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely has elements of season five though I see this as set somewhere after 5B ends and Michael's been punished and exiled from Los Angeles, so some canon elements but also divergent since set post s5 (and I have no idea what happens in 5B at all). Also, definitely something different with the shape of his full punishment.
> 
> Also this is in no way related to my _Gemelos_ series, which was started pre-season 5 premiering and is more fanon-y.
> 
> This has art now to go with it!
> 
> The lovely easerysuttere on tumblr (https://easerysuttere.tumblr.com/) has made some drawings of Ella and Michael in this story:
> 
> https://easerysuttere.tumblr.com/post/629607915527061504/i-think-we-could-make-a-good-team

** A (Former) Archangel Walks into a Bar **

The _El Dorado_ is dark and smokey, not that the dim lighting bothers Michael much. He may no longer have his wings—one of Father’s punishments for his plotting, would that dear old Dad had taken his power over Fear too, but that would have been too much to hope for---but his senses are as acute as they’d ever been. Sharp as since the literal dawn of time.

Perhaps a pity as the casino is old, one of the oldest in Reno, with its garish neon out front and collection of down and out regulars. The smell inside is not exactly pleasant.

He’s been casing this place for a week, but he’ll have to move on eventually. People notice when he plays poker too long, when he wins too many hands. It’s easy though, and a way to earn nice sums of money. Michael makes his opponents fear that they’re losing, amps up their anxiety over the hands their dealt, and low and behold, a guy with a straight flush is bowing out and pushing his chips Michael’s way. That much “luck” got him kicked out of Vegas first, but if he moves from casino to casino more regularly here, he can make it work. Eventually, he’ll have to push forward somewhere else. East Coast maybe? He hasn’t been to New York since the 1960s, but he could maybe stretch out there, see Atlantic City.

He nods to the bar tender, who, after a week, knows that Michael just takes a shot of Vodka, neat. He sits at the bar, not without some effort to wrestle his way onto the stool and damn his weak side even now, as he picks the shot up with his good hand. Michael’s halfway through his drink when a woman sits down next to him at the crowded bar. He figures it’s an accident, brought on only by the fact there’s no other place to sit here on a Friday night. No one ever nears him if they can help it.

Would that _he_ could help it, but he picks out fears the same way his brother picks out desires. Yes, _asking_ for them gets it all direct, makes the process simpler. But deep down, he knows his twin can decipher others’ desires much without asking by now. Honestly, with the way Samael is living temptation, half the time once humans see him, they just want _him_. Michael wishes often---story of his immortal life---that he could tamp down the way he increases human and Celestial anxieties alike, the way his very presence just sets people on edge, even if the humans have no idea why. They know enough to know he’s _wrong_ , so they give him a wide berth, and he lets them. He might be exiled to this one plane, which isn’t so much of a punishment as Father’s other parting shot—and he’s oh so sure both brothers felt that this little hiccup was fitting and suggested it---but even if he’s stuck on Earth, Michael doesn’t have to stretch himself to win friends and influence people.

And with the anxiety and flat out fear he provokes as well as the wrongness he radiates, Michael doesn’t exactly win popularity contests. He wins _poker_ , and that along with his fake papers and an itinerant life is enough to keep him moving. Toward what, he’s not sure, but away from Los Angeles, that’s for damn sure.

He and Samael and Amenadiel might not be fighting now. (Translation: he got his ass kicked and Dad levied the punishment.) However, he has no interest in being in their town, taking their leftovers, or in watching Samael apparently paroled from his sentence---for doing the right thing just _once_ mind---hold court over his loyal and adoring public.

He’d rather let Father inflict a dozen more creative and annoying punishments on him than _watch_ _that_.

However, Michael’s not used to another person even this close to him. He sighs and sips his drink again. Turning to the dark, wavy-haired brunette, he stills when he recognizes her---the huge eyes and the tiny frame, even now---it’s Ella Lopez, the forensic scientist from Samael’s precinct. What on earth is she doing here? It’s almost eight hours from Los Angeles, and he’d barely met her, only seen her for that one case he worked.

She never figured into his plans.

She hadn’t _known_ and understanding Samael as he did and his twin’s tendency to omit important truths (but oh he _never_ lies directly, at least, not quite), Michael’s sure Ella’s as clueless about the Celestial world as she ever was.

He could have used her instead of Espinoza in one of his many plans. She was a believer after all. Seeing St. Michael in all his robed glory would have made her compliant after, he was sure, the inevitable twenty minutes or more of rapid-fire questions. Ella talks a lot. He only worked alongside her for a week, but even he remembers that months later. But he’d picked Dan instead, hoping his animosity toward Samael could be manipulated.

But how did that old human saying go, “The best laid plans of mice and men…”

Yeah, all gone awry now. Totally ancient history.

So, why is she here?

Michael eyes her finally, and it would be obvious to him even if fear wasn’t his gift that something has changed in Ella, more than just her pale look or the dark, heavy circles under her eyes. He can feel the hints of it already wafting to him without having to do a thing. Some Celestial gifts have to be concentrated on. _Hard_. Amenadiel always had to focus to control time. But some are more natural, and he can always tell fear the way the late Uriel could always sense patterns.

He cannot shut it off, and Dear Father has he tried.

But it depends on the human and their mood too. In truth, around the Silver City, it’s no differen. Ella is scared and twitchy, and again, even a mortal could tell that. But she’s built up a fairly impressive wall for a human, and he can only get a few flashes without putting the effort in. For the oddest reason, he keeps seeing lilies, and he has no idea why she’d be scared of flowers, but he’s seen odder phobias.

He’s seen them all.

“Tequila,” she says, and he notes this change too.

She’s brief to the bartender, says little, and barks out the request more gruffly than he ever thought her capable of from what little he saw of her back in California.

Michael should keep his mouth shut. No one would notice him now, well outside of his damn scar, and thank you, oh twin, for that parting gift from the now quite literal City of Angels. But with Father’s punishment, for once in his interminable life, it would be _impossible_ to confuse him with Samael. All Michael has to do is finish his drink and not breathe a word. It’s not his fault that of all the gin joints in all the world, Ella Lopez waltzed into the one he was milking for spare cash. He just has to keep his mouth shut.

But he’s never been good with that either. It’s one of the few things he does share with Sam.

As the bartender sets her drink on the bar, Ella looks around, staring especially hard at the Black Jack tables---never his own style, too much left to luck even if he felt like learning to count cards---but her eyes finally catch his own. She won’t recognize him, and that’s good because he’s an idiot and all roads eventually lead back to Samael and Amenadiel somehow. Even if Ella is on vacation for a long weekend by utter chance, if his brothers even start believing he was in the same town for some nefarious purpose, they’ll hunt him down.

Michael would rather avoid more punishments and face scarring if he can avoid it. He’s had enough of Father’s dumbest angel and of the most self-obsessed one as well to last the rest of time.

However, as Ella spies his scar, she startles just a bit. Does the same as she catches the look of his shoulder, the way the right side is more raised than it should be. Oddly, as he is now, the wrongness of his right-side bothers people less. Maybe that makes sense, as overbearing physical strength isn’t supposed to be what he projects currently. Whatever. It’s still been a while since someone noticed him more than just as a flash of anxiety rising and a quick sprint for the door. But Ella has noticed, and she frowns back at him, her look surprisingly sympathetic.

If only she knew.

She’d hate him, and, for once, Ella would have a right to. Not just because he’s scary and unsettling; he is that even if he tries not to be with strangers. No. He’s hurt her friends, but that’s nothing she knows. This last trace of his brothers’ L.A. lives, one who is a babe in the woods he still bets when Celestial matters are involved.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and a bit of her more typical cheer bubbles up in her words.

Michael sighs and waves to the bartender. “I’m fine.”

“I…the scar and the everything. I’m sorry. The wound on your face looks like it hurts. Who did that to you?”

He chuckles wryly. Playing cards or not, haunted looking or not, apparently we all only change so much (well, except for him currently). Ella may be clearly upset by something, and he could press harder and find out what those lilies _mean_ the fast way, but she’s still the woman he met months back. Still talks too much, probably still cares too much.

Oh mortals.

If they had billions of years to waste, they’d stop caring too. It’s so much easier.

But it’s sweet, her tone, even if her questions would be rude if Michael gave two shits. He shrugs and offers her his answer. “Once, a very long time ago, my brother and I had a fight. My shoulder never was quite right after that. Unfortunately for me, a few months back, we had a bit of a rematch, and he left a parting gift.”

A soft hand is on his shoulder, and that he doesn’t expect. No one touches him. _No one_. Not because he wouldn’t want it, dear Dad does he. Just anyone to pat his good shoulder or hug him or more… But if humans and Celestials _both_ feel the wrongness of him and his gift from a distance, then touching him is overwhelming, reflects their panic and anxieties back on them a dozen fold.

Michael jerks his good shoulder away before Ella’s overwhelmed.

She blinks at him, and he can feel her change as her phobia ramps up in her mind. Not just lilies now, a full room, a hot house with special lights and the smell is…wrong somehow. Not just flowers or, more accurately, the flowers are covering up rot underneath, decaying human flesh. Michael doesn’t know what case Ella worked on last, but one of them is clearly fresh on her mind. Odd, for someone usually so cheery over the bodies, with quips to spare around them. She never seemed scared of her work before.

But he forces his own walls up, feeble as they are. He doesn’t want to know. In point of fact, he has _never_ wanted to know. He’s found manipulating fear useful for him and, yes, was eager to use it against his brothers as a tool. However, he doesn’t just want to be a satellite dish for the world’s pain and fear. But with Father, you don’t get choices.

One twin had to get the fear. Would that it had been Samael, but that was not to be.

“I…are you okay?” Ella asks, but he can see her eyes darting around for an exit already.

Michael laughs, and it comes out more shrill than he’d have wished. Oh well, in the two months since he left Los Angeles with his tail between his legs, he’s had to adjust to many things. Apparently, he’s rusty with practiced insouciance.

“That’s a million-dollar question.”

She frets over him, even as he can feel that damned room of lilies and rot basically pouring off her in waves. Reaching out, she almost touches the scar on his face, but hesitates at the last moment, realizing she’s overstepping boundaries.

“I’ve been here a few weeks. I know there’s a shelter in town. If you need a place to get away from your family…if they’re hurting you, there are other places to go.”

Michael sighs before gesturing for a second vodka from the bartender, not that he can feel it. He likes to pretend he can though. He hasn’t been vulnerable enough on earth to get truly wasted since back in New York. Since he was in love himself, but _that_ was several lifetimes ago.

“I’m far away from my family now, trust me,” he replies.

She nods and turns back to her shot of Tequila. “Alright, just so you know there are options.”

Michael frowns back at her. “Is that where you stayed?”

Ella shakes her head and drums nails with chipped polish on the wood of the bar. “No, I have a small place, still looking for a permanent one.”

He frowns. The mention of weeks had confused him, but now that she’s talking about looking to settle in Reno, he’s even more shocked. She seemed to love Los Angeles and adore (cause they always did) not only his idiot twin but also Chloe and Dan as well. Why on earth was she so far away and starting a life in Nevada?

_Not your business. Anything connected to Samael and Amenadiel is not your business, Mike, leave it_.

That would be a what a smart man would do. He’d walk away. But Michael, for all his plans and foresight, was not as smart as he wished he was. If he were, he’d have trusted in his twin’s ability to self-destruct and fuck up his own life unassisted and just pulled out the bucket of popcorn to laugh at him from the Silver City when it did.

It would have saved Michael a lot of pain, a deforming scar (to match his shoulder and _how thoughtful, Sam_ ), and every other complication currently assailing him.

But, yeah, not that smart. So he can’t resist asking. It isn’t like Ella is averse to oversharing, herself. Hardly.

“Why did you move to town? I just got here from Vegas. Needed something with less attention on me,” he admits, going first.

She quirks her head at him but shrugs. “I used to work in California. I…I thought after something happened on the job that I could just get back to it, be who I was. I can’t, you know? My friends expect cheery, goofy Ella. Just the chica talking about Comic Cons and _Lord of the Rings_ , and I just…at night I can’t even sleep, and it got too hard both doing what I did and trying to be happy for them. I needed a break for a while. I mean, I have leave cause of the whole bad stuff happening on the job, you know?”

Michael frowns, now wondering if the room of lilies and the ominous grow lamps and the scent of decay even choking him reflected from her memories…if that happened while he was in town or not. Part of him hopes not, because obviously Samael and his band of loyal humans were quite distracted at the time for all the good it netted Michael. However, if he was a distraction enough to help let that happen, well, he was sorry. He hadn’t dragged her into anything in Los Angeles because, much like Charlie or Trixie, she seemed too innocent to yank into his machinations. He took _advantage_ of the apparently mortal infant’s cold to prey on his brother.

For fuck’s sake. He’d been angry and not a monster. He didn’t go about giving babies colds or harassing forensic scientists who were too naïve by half for Dad’s playground.

“What did you do?” he asks, focusing on his empty glass, trying not to seem too eager.

Truth be told, he’s not even sure why he cares now, but she’s the first person he’s talked to in two months who’s not a mark at poker, a bartender, or a motel clerk. A guy has limits, even one like him, who is used to being lonely. 

“I was with the LAPD, but not a cop,” she says. “I mean, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I just…you’d also think just being the lab tech wouldn’t get me in trouble. I’m supposed to be just in the lab running slides and analyzing blood splatter. The safe stuff, but this time it wasn’t, and I tried…but I can’t concentrate or sleep or…I just needed a new place,” she confesses. “New routine and a new me, you know?”

Michael nods. “I know exactly what you mean. Look, I play poker, and I can see you eying the Black Jack tables. I know that look.”

“Do you?”

“You’re about to run the table,” he surmises.

Ella’s eyes widen but she tries to look nonplussed again, even if she fails miserably. “What?”

“Takes one to know one,” he continues. “It’s like the mafia or, well, cable services. You have your territory in Reno, and I’ll keep mine, sister. I’ll take poker, you do Black Jack, and we won’t have a problem.”

  
She cracks a small smile at that. “I think between both of us, this place so know what hit it.” She holds out her hand and he takes it with his good one. “Ella Lopez, and, seriously, if you need advice on any help…if someone’s still hurting you…”

He quirks his head at her. Of course, she’d know these things. This girl, so good as gold, this one, so like a child really in her interests and in her trust, she’d know where to offer strangers succor even in a new town of her own. How odd. How beyond human really. How just utterly kind.

Rare that.

“I’m Michael, pleasure to meet you.”

If the name seems odd to her, she doesn’t show it. Honestly, in a town like Reno, there are many names and many things that don’t fit for anyone, like his twin’s L.A., Michael suspects this big little town is full of transplants reinventing themselves. As good a place as any to try, he figures.

She nods. “Well, great, Michael. It’s good to meet you. I…I’m staying at the _Vagabond_ _Motel_ if you, uh, ever need a friendly place to hang.”

He shakes his head even as he drops her hand. Oh yes, before the scar was as off putting as was his posture, back when he loomed far more than he can now. For once, he’s amused and actually heartened that, at least with someone as kind as Ella, the scar---his brokenness---elicits concern. And not anxiety. It’s a novelty. He’s worked as hard as he can to block his powers, to keep her from feeling more fear at his very touch. It must be working because while she’s broadcasting about those lilies, he’s seen nothing deeper, not _felt_ exactly what she has felt.

  
That’s the worst.

To feel the horror and the pain. After all, most phobias start for a reason, don’t they?

He offers her a final smile before climbing as best as he can from his stool and getting to the floor. “Well, Miss Lopez, then. I’ll be seeing you.”

**

Michael makes it most of the night without bumping into Ella again. He sees her at the Black Jack table, and the woman has laser focus on what she’s doing. She also has a massive pile of chips that makes him green with envy. He’s doing fine for the night, but she’s going gangbusters. If they teamed up, with all their talents, they’d really clean the town out.

It’s tempting.

Not all angels are rolling in dough and property and fucking castles like Samael.

However, toward the end of the night, he notices Ella in the corner. She’s cashed in her chips and secreted the money away in her purse. It’s one of those clutch things without a strap and huh, that’s a thought…Anyway, she’s talking to a dude that Michael can _feel_ from there. He knows this aura, has felt it before. Sharks swim amongst humans all the time. This is one of them. In the movies or even in popular culture, humans assume that the rapists and murderers, the serial killers and psychos feel no fear at all.

This is a lie.

An image that the media has cultivated.

Oh, a true sociopath tends to feel nothing, but they are not so scattered that they cannot feel anxieties, run the traps in their mind about their plans and how _not to get caught_. The man leading Ella out to the alley looks utterly normal, unassuming, even suave in a suit not nearly as expensive as Samael likes them but worth far more than anything Michael’s ever owned. But Michael can _feel_ it. The rat bastard is already agonizing about _what if I get caught_.

He stands fast and grabs his chips, shoving them into his satchel, and he’ll trade them in later. They know him here, know he’ll be back every Friday like clockwork…at least for a while longer. Michael hurries as best as he can, speed qualified even though he has his powers (just _not_ his wings) because of his limp and the human witnesses. He could go faster, at least by mortal standards, but he’s been in enough trouble all year, and Amenadiel has that conveniently enforced “Mortals and Divinity shouldn’t mix” rule. So, Michael slips around tables and hurries as best he can all at a quickened mortal pace. He knows full well what Ella has gotten herself into even if she can’t see it.

He hurries out and finds that she’s the one beating the man in front of her. She’s got brass knuckles on one hand and has slammed her fist into the man’s jaw. Michael is impressed but also grateful the man who targeted Ella (or did she target him?) is no taller than Espinoza was. If he’d been Samael’s height, then even with her brass knuckles and her rough edges, Ella wouldn’t have fared well at all.

Then again, maybe _she_ knows how to pick them if this was her intention all along.

Michael waits under the lights and by the dumpster, not sure yet what he’s walked into, but knowing that he wants to give Ella her space. The way she’s moved into a swift knee to the groin for her attacker has Michael amused. She looks every inch the avenging angel and his sisters---Remiel and Azrael, fierce in their own ways---would be put to shame in this moment. However, he perhaps applauds Ella too soon.

Her heels slip on the gravel and she stumbles back.

It gives the would-be rapist a chance to grab her by the throat and hold her roughly up against the wall.

Michael’s seen enough. He has no mind to steal Ella’s fun or whatever the fuck this is. But she’s in deep shit now, and he’s not much of an angel these days, but he still is one. And he has no interest in seeing an innocent hurt before him. Not like this. After his failures and tantrum in Los Angeles, Michael’s utterly spent on carnage and just wants quiet, in point of fact.

He’s on the man in a flash, his hand wrapped around the bastard’s throat and holding him high above his head. His eyes blaze gold, all that righteous fury of an avenging angel now buzzing through him instead. Michael’s shoulders itch, phantom pains that spring from the urge to release wings that no longer exist (not that they were that functional in the first place), but he’s felt more in form, more _himself_ , than he has since Dad levied his punishment.

“Tell me, Mortal,” Michael says, his voice a low purr. “What is it you fear?”

It doesn’t take long before the man is blabbing to him about his own childhood and the beltings his mother gave him. Michael couldn’t care less about the sob story or the excuse, but he can draw on that, and he will. He twists his power around him like a cloak almost and focuses, the man before him starts to scream.

Michael drops Ella’s attacker to the ground. The rat bastard curls around himself and screams again and again, begging for the belt to stop.

It never will.

Michael could make it cease, and, except against beings of other pantheons or rival armies, he’s always released the fear’s hold eventually. But this was…not acceptable. This man, this _shark_ , has asked for it, demanded the attention of the Sword of God and the Angel of Fear, and he’s won it. Let the asshole deal with the visions for the rest of his life.

It’s what he deserves.

Michael brushes the dirt of the alley from his clothes and turns to Ella, who is shaking now. He can feel the fear as a blast to his very system, has to force _himself_ not to hyperventilate like a mangy human but her own fear is so hard and so visceral. Still, Michael is impressed by her walls. The putrid smell of decaying flesh and the overly intense florals may be in his nose, but he still can’t quite feel what happened to Ella, why she’s a ball of fear herself now.

But he also gets other things.

This flavor of fear he knows all too well.

This feeling he’s perceived all his life, since his Creation. Even Samael has had it near him, and how frustrating that his twin, _his very mirror_ , fears him so. But that’s the sensation now, as Ella regards him with wide eyes darting between his victim (once her attacker) and him.

“I…how?”

Michael wants to laugh. To be fair, if he were more himself, the fact he’d reduced her attacker to a crying, mewling mess of a man would be less confusing. But, as Father has _remade him_ , it is probably more inscrutable. After all, there are few women, even as tall as he is like this, who could do what he did, hold that bastard up high. Honestly, barring maybe female Olympic weightlifters---maybe---Michael suspects none at all could.

But Ella’s still terrified, and he didn’t…for once he wanted it _not_ to be of him, and that’s how one nice favor is returned after another, he supposes. He should know this. Cynicism is his life.

Michael holds up both hands to her, palms flat, and channels the line still in all bibles: “Be not afraid, Ella.”

The woman before him pushes herself up against the nearest alley wall and is shivering, and now it’s not the lilies that fill his own senses but the confusion over him, over what he’s done, and the powers he’s clearly displayed for her. It makes Michael almost double over, that wave of nausea and terror working through Ella, and it is even harder to push away knowing that it’s about _him_.

He squats low, still with his hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you. You have my word.”

Not that his word is worth much, and not that he doesn’t lie like a rug as needs to. But he means it this time both because she actually _touched_ him. Before at the bar, actually offered him kindness when no one ever does. And because if anything ever happened to Ella, and his brothers thought it was his fault, he’d be locked down in Hell permanently.

A fate that, wingless, Michael does not relish.

“I…not again,” Ella mutters more to herself than at him.

Michael frowns. That’s not the reaction he expects. Her terror is still there, roiling in his gut and making his mouth taste of bile. Dear Father, so very much of it, but the flavor is changing again, the lilies are long gone and the fear of him now pales in comparison to the constant tattoo in his brain, the litany of fear and anxiety stampeding through Ella’s mind too, _telling her to be afraid of herself_.

Michael quirks his head at her but forces himself not to leave his spot. He’s glad he wore jeans out tonight. He usually does even though robes and kilts are no real strangers to him. Fashion changes over the centuries after all, but most of the time, it’s too much for now, even a couple months into his altered physique, to put on dresses and skirts. Also, he’d be basically flashing Ella squatted as low to the ground as he is now.

So good sartorial choice all around.

“Why are you worried about yourself?” He shakes his head, still ferreting through her feelings. “I’m glad you’re less scared of me because I’m not going to hurt you, but you really…oh…oh!” He gets it then. Something he doesn’t know if even Samael knew. Something his little sister has so very much to answer for. Mixing with mortals is forbidden, yeah right. Unless you’re Samael or Amenadiel or the fucking Angel of Death before _any of them_. “I’m real. You’re not crazy.”

“You just picked up a dude twice your size like he was nothing, and he’s _still_ screaming, and you didn’t…lady, this is freaking weird. I have to be hallucinating again. I thought---”

Michael curses under his breath, and he will be talking with Azrael later no matter how long it takes to summon her busy, idiot psychopomp ass. How stupid. Samael has fucked his way through human history. Amenadiel has created a very defective Nephilim, and his sister has left a scared, confused human in her wake, one clearly convinced she’s schizophrenic. All he did was…okay…admittedly cause a lot of trouble…but it’s not like his _still winged_ siblings are blameless either.

Michael nods, and he can hear that soon the bouncers at the casino will be coming for them both. There’s too much screaming in the alley coming from Mr. Attempted Rape 2021 for them not to check.

“Ella…uh, Miss Lopez? I swear that I’m here. I’m a fucking mess too, but I’m here, and you’re not insane. Look, let’s get you back to the _Vagabond_ , right? You said that’s where you were staying. I don’t…you’re wrecked, and I’m not leaving you.”

“Why?” she croaks, and she pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them.

Fucking perfect.

  
Try the hero route the one time, and you end up with a chick in a catatonic level of shock. Perfect.

Michael sighs and inches toward her, well aware that the bouncers and management will be on their asses soon. “Ella, I can’t carry you. I’m strong---”

“No shit.”

He takes it as a good sign that Ella can still snark back at him.

“Sure, but I’m awkward and my right side doesn’t work so well. I need you to stand up and move with me. Can you do that?”

“You’re not real. This stuff is never real. I…are you a ghost too?”

Michael laughs because it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. Witches, angels, and demons all exist, but there are no ghosts. Azrael would never allow it and human souls left to linger on earth rot. So why on Earth…

_Fuck, what has Rae Rae been telling this one?_

Michael shakes his head and nears her enough to brush Ella’s hair back from her face. I’m here, and, like I said, I’m pretty fucked up myself, but you’re not hallucinating, and I don’t think _either_ of us want to talk to the cops right now, okay? Let’s just get out of here. I have a car in the parking lot. You coming?”

She nods and finally gets to her feet.

Like this, he doesn’t tower exactly, not like his twin, and perhaps Michael should have been more specific when he always wished to be anything _but_ identical to Samael. Dad was always oh so fond of the _ironic_ punishments, wasn’t He? But even female, Michael is far taller than Ella, who’s tiny, and he helps her walk by tucking her to his good side and wrapping his left arm around her.

“Come on, I cannot deal with the questions here,” he says again, coaxing her forward.

Ella frowns at him. “But you’re real, right?”

“You’re not crazy, Ella.”

She snorts. “Wouldn’t be the first time though.” Ella looks back to the corner of the alley, where her attacker is still whimpering and covering his head from belts that aren’t there. “Is he going to get better? I mean, after what you did to him?”

Michael’s eyes flash again, he can feel that much wrath working through him, even if he hadn’t felt Ella’s fear flare with the gesture. Just peachy. “He’ll never get better, Ella. I promise you that.”

“Good. Let’s go.”


	2. So not an Amazon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back at her hotel, Ella snaps out of her shock and questions Michael about how he saved her.

Ella doesn’t remember the trip back to the _Vagabond_. She’s too confused by everything swirling in her brain to realize much of anything until at least an hour later when she’s curled up in her bed with a tall glass of water on the night stand and an ice bucket laid out too. Sitting on the far edge of the room in the tattered cloth armchair is the woman who saved her. The other woman doesn’t blink. It’s one of the first things that comes to Ella’s brain as she struggles to remember everything that’s happened, tries to fill in blanks that stay stubbornly empty between her time in the alley and now in the plain motel she’s been staying in.

There was her chance to get a little vigilantism out on a guy she’d already caught two days before at the _El Dorado_ trying to spike a girl’s drink, then it going bonkers off the rails…and now this woman who saved her and did things that _no one_ should be able to do.

Unless her own fear and too much adrenaline had left her imagining the glowing gold eyes or the sheer level of strength she… _Michael wasn’t it_ …yielded.

After Rae Rae and her medium days (although she’s seen Rae Rae less and less in L.A.), Ella’s not sure what she’s seen, but she’s clearly been driven back here by someone. And, for now, Michael is watching her with wide brown eyes that still never seem to blink.

She groans to herself and picks up the glass and drops the cubes in it, then chugs down half the water in a greedy gulp. Ella doesn’t put it down, lets the cool sides press into her palms in a desperate and probably futile effort to stay sane. To stay grounded.

“You stayed?”

The woman sighs and leans back in the chair, crossing one, long leg over the other. “Strictly speaking, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Nowhere better, at least. You looked like that asshole got a good chokehold on your neck before I intervened. I didn’t trust you alone here even after I got you into your room. Was I wrong?”

Ella looks down at the threadbare comforter. She can’t stand the scrutiny in a person she’s only half convinced exists. At least this time, Michael says she’s not a ghost. That’s not reassuring. Maybe Ella’s crazy brain has conjured something different this time. After all, this woman came out of nowhere and saved her in the alley like something out of a comic book.

In fact, with her long, dark hair, prominent nose, and height that has to come close to six feet, the stranger reminds Ella a little of Gal Gadot, but that’s…sure brain, now she’s sending herself superheroes for company.

Wonder Woman Michael clearly isn’t.

Just another sign that after everything with Pete and almost dying, more cracks are opening up in what’s left of Ella’s sanity.

“You’re quiet,” Michael says.

Ella wants to laugh but it comes out more as a choked sob. It seems to startle Michael, as she sits up taller but doesn’t leave the chair. Ella appreciates that because if this strange woman (figment?) got closer to her, Ella might just pass out again.

“You say that like I’m supposed to be talking a mile a minute.”

Granted, she used to, still does sometimes, but it’s harder these days. She doesn’t do more than call Chloe sometimes on the road. She rarely calls her family back in Detroit since they want her back in Michigan, wants her safe from her job. And she knows where that might lead. To just being under her mom and dad’s thumbs, to being cared for by them but also never really leaving their apartment again either.

But, yeah, she was chatty enough with Michael at the bar. They’re here at the _Vagabond_ , aren’t they? Still what even is there to say?

_Thanks for driving somebody mondo loco in an alley? Hey, great job manhandling a dude twice your size?_

What even?

“You gave a lot of details at the bar,” Michael supplies, and she still hasn’t blinked since Ella came to. “I…look we should probably talk about what you saw.”

Michael says this like she’d rather pay her taxes right then or get a root canal. That lax of enthusiasm she can also relate too, and Ella laughs again. It’s probably hysterical, but she’s had a weird fucking night in a life full of them, and maybe she’s allowed to laugh like a witch on crack sometimes.

“Are you okay?” Michael sighs and curses sharply. Then seems to talk more to herself than to Ella. “Of course, you’re not okay. I was serious about the ‘Be not afraid’ schtick, Ella. I’m not here to hurt you. Honestly, I had no interest in you at all except making sure you didn’t switch to my turf with poker tonight. I just didn’t want you to get hurt when I saw that creep taking you out back I…what were you even thinking?”

Ella takes another sip of her water and tries to ignore the way her hands shake. “I think I get to go first asking questions.”

Michael sits even taller and crosses her arms over her chest. She seems to be steeling herself for any coming inquiries. Which fine, but Ella’s so not Charlotte. She’s not a prosecutor or a cop or anything. She has tons of things she wants to know, but she’s not exactly a master of grilling anyone.

_Except Pete, that one time…_

She can feel Pete’s hands again around her throat then and smell the lilies and the death and all of it, and her hands shake harder still. The glass falls from her grip, and she’s sure it’ll splash the remains all over her lap, but then Michael is there. It’s a blink in time and Ella knows this but the other woman is across the room and holding the glass as if it’s no feat at all.

Maybe it isn’t for her.

_If you’re not just finally fully nuts, Ella_ …

It’s instinct overwhelming her, and Ella pushes back against the cheap headboard. “ _Rayos_. What the hell are you doing?”

Michael narrows her eyes back at her. When she speaks, her tone is clipped and brittle. “And this is why I don’t get involved with people. You try and do the right thing one time, and you get a girl going catatonic on you and acting like you’re Dracula when you try and catch her water. I’m not going to hurt you. You do get that, right? You can count cards, so you’re not dumb.”

“Thanks,” Ella drawls.

“But maybe you’re not getting it. I don’t want to put a fine point on it, but if I’d wanted you hurt, I’d have just let that asshole have his way with you. If I wanted to damage you myself, believe me, you would already be a screaming mess on the floor just like Mr. Attempted Rape back at the _El Dorado_.”

Michael snorts to herself and sets the glass back on the nightstand before sidling back to her side of the room. It’s then that Ella notices the slight hunch of her right shoulder while seated at the bar is more than she thought. When the stranger is not moving like damn lightening (if speedsters were a thing, Ella _might_ offer that as an answer), Michael favors her whole right side, her right arm hanging oddly as that leg drags while she walks.

“I…oh,” Ella says.  
  


Michael sits back down and glares at her. “‘Oh?’ Is it finally getting through your far too thick skull that I’m trying to be the good guy here?” She shakes her head. “You’re lucky. I don’t usually do charity, and after your reaction, I’m thinking this is a one-off.”

Ella can’t…she has too much she’s been dealing with in the last three months since she almost died. She cannot deal with this strange, surly _perra_ making it all worse. Usually she’d be nice, but being nice has cost her so much lately. Right now, she just can’t sugar coat anything. Can’t be bubbly and ramble and put _Michael at ease_. Instead, she blurts out:

“What are you?”

Michael sighs and her fingers stroke the scar that cuts viciously across her forehead and her nose, all the way to the far side of her right cheek. “Well, since we’re off to such a fucked up start, why don’t you take a guess. Tell me what I am. It might be amusing?”

Ella considers that and, well, the most obvious answer tumbles easily from her mouth. “Are you from Themyscira?”

Michael’s eyes widen. “I have no idea what the hell that is.”

“Are you an Amazon? I mean, come on, those movies have only made like 100s of millions of dollars. You don’t do comics?”

She shocks Ella by laughing then, doubling over and giving out belly laughs until she’s a shaking mess. “Oh…that’s rich. Yes, right…you don’t know. Well, that would be quite a funny multiverse conversation. But, no, Miss Lopez, I’m not a superhero. I’m not a Greek goddess or in whatever spandex club you like to read about.”

Ella sighs and sets her head in her hands. “So, you’re real and I’m not hallucinating. You’re not a ghost, and you’re not Wonder Woman, right?”

Michael howls. “Oh, that’s really fucking funny. Hardly. I don’t usually help anyone at all. It’s not my typical style. I…” she stops laughing then and, sitting up, sobers. “I helped mortals once, long ago, but this has been the first non-selfish thing I’ve done in eons. I just…a superhero. Fuck no.”  
  


“Okay, so you’re a mutant?”

Michael rolls her eyes. “The guessing game was amusing at first, but now it’s kind of insulting. Before you guess anything about radioactive scorpions---”

“It’s actually spiders in the comics and---”

She snickers. “Whatever. You’re not going to believe me but for what it’s worth, I’m an angel of the Lord. Technically I’m on probation, but I’m still part of the Host.” She shakes her head and leans back in the recliner, spreading her knees out wide like assholes on the subway back in Detroit tend to do. As if here on out, Michael’s on a mission to take up as much space as she can.

Ella blinks. This was the last thing she’d have guessed. Michael’s an angel. Right. Sure, and she’s definitely not doing well, and if her mom and dad and abuelita knew, they’d drag her back to Michigan and maybe even make her go to the hospital. This woman is nothing like an angel. Angels wouldn’t drink and curse and gamble and leave a dude screaming forever in an alley. What a lie.

“You’re not.”  
  


Michael shrugs her good shoulder. “Correction, I’m not much of one these days. Father in his infinite and alleged wisdom has taken my wings for the duration. When I get them back is anyone’s guess. However,” she says, standing and bowing a little. “The very former Sword of God, nice to meet you.”

Ella’s jaw drops and she’s getting revelations on top of revelations dropped on her today. “You’re _that_ Michael? Um, pretty sure he’s a guy in scripture.”

Michael sits back down and, at first, crosses her arms over her chest. Then she seems to be aware of her breasts and stops, dropping her arms to her side instead. “I _am_. Father felt like wings and other things needed to be stripped from me for however long He sees fit. I can admit I’ve been suffering from bad judgment lately.”

  
“How bad?”

“I can’t go back to Heaven right now, so pretty damn bad,” she finishes. “Although, still better than a fallen cherub I know and a more well-known brother, I guess.”

“You’re not an angel.”

“Oh, get off it. Like angels have to be saints.”

Ella laughs again and maybe she’s already in an asylum somewhere being watched. Maybe she really did crack after Pete and this conversation isn’t even happening. “But you _are_ a saint, literally.”

“Humans assigned that. I sure didn’t ask,” Michael snaps back. “Look, you saw for yourself my speed, strength, eyes, and my power. What do you _think_ I could be if not an angel?”

“But you terrified someone!”

“First, why do you think Gabriel always goes around telling mortals ‘be not afraid.’ We’re the living embodiment of the awe of God. It’s too much often for human minds to handle. That’s why even if I had my wings, your brain would scramble if you saw them. Which would suck for you.”

“I…but I…” she sighs. “Look, I had a ghost friend always appearing to me until I moved to L.A., mostly. My best bud in L.A. was like super method and thought he was the Devil. There is just no way I have a guardian angel now. Especially not one who likes to hustle poker and cheat.”

Michael’s eyes widen. “What now?”

“I took a break to watch you at the poker table from a distance. I don’t know how you were able…people kept folding with great hands---way better than yours---so there’s something _jodido_ going on there.”

She gives a low whistle. “Well, aren’t you the sharp one.”

“I said I was a forensic tech. Noticing stuff comes with the territory. I…what did you do to that guy in the alley?”

“You wanted to make sure it stayed that way. It will, should I wish it to.”

“I…” Ella’s throat feels covered in cotton balls. It’s hard to swallow. Once, she’d have begged for mercy, told Michael even if she’s supposedly an angel that it’s up to the Big Guy to judge later. But she’s had too many bastards hands around her throat, felt her life squeezed out almost twice now, and she honestly could give a shit what happens to that man. But the way he’d _screamed_. “I don’t want him to get better. I just…what did you do?”

Michael shrugs and studies her nails. They’re ragged and unkempt, so Ella can tell it’s all to keep her eyes off Ella’s own. “A girl has to have some mysteries, doesn’t she? Isn’t that kind of your thing?”

“I dunno. Why was he screaming?”

“Because he was having a very involved panic attack. It’s just not going to stop any time soon.”

“But…you’re an angel!”

“Well, there’s and Angel of Death and others of my brothers and sisters who can be really fucking dangerous. I mean, Dad made us to stop demons and other gods from horning in, to fight back elemental darkness. We’re not exactly hugs and puppies, Ella.”

“But you made him like perma-scared, right?”

Michael shrugged. “I did.”

Her heart thuds harder, and Ella brings her knees up to her chest. “Would you do that to me? Can you?”

Michael sighs theatrically. “And we were doing so well. For someone who’s supposed to be smart, you’re having a hard time grasping the basics, aren’t you?”

“I---”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I wanted to help you. I _did,_ if we’re keeping score. I’m dangerous as fuck and, alright, a disgruntled bastard, but trying to hurt you would be like punching a kitten. Not only is there zero challenge in it, even I’d find that gross. No, Ella, I just happened to cross your path when you needed it. Believe me, you were the last thing I saw coming.” Michael stands and grabs her messenger bag from the table beside the chair. “Well, this has been…if not fun…then at least not the same ole, same ole. Try not to do the vigilante racket anymore. I won’t be there to save your ass next time.”

She frowns at that and looks back at the very strange woman who swears she’s an angel. And, honestly, _something_ has to explain the speed and strength and how thoroughly she terrified Ella’s attacker. As long as Michael’s real---and the patrons at _El Dorado_ did see and interact with her so points beyond Rae Rae---then grounded angel makes as much sense as gamma rays, ancient goddesses, or maybe an incognito superhero.

“Really? So you’re not actually a guardian angel?”

“Those do not exist, and it would be below my paygrade if I were back in heaven anyway. You don’t send your best weapon for the small stuff.”

“Only if you get grounded,” Ella points out, somehow feeling just a bit cheeky with her and sticking her tongue out at Michael. “Then, you have the free time.”

“I prefer to make my money,” Michael admits, heading to the door. “In fact, because I was playing Good Samaritan, I know have a good chunk of chips to get changed over tomorrow at the casino. I like my cash in hand when I leave for the night so, again, _you’re welcome_.”

Ella curses under her breath in Spanish. “Yeesh, you’re such a bitch. That’s just not how I thought an angel would be.”

“Well, I’m also _not_ some pearly, white-winged Precious Moments figurine come to life either, Lopez.” Michael stops with her hand on the doorknob. “Look, I don’t know what you’re running from exactly…how badly you were hurt on the job, but take care of yourself better. Don’t need to run off and play Scrappy Doo and get killed. You have to have friends and family out there somewhere who’d hate that. I mean, for them at least, get over it, Ella.”

“I can’t. And you don’t know anything.”

Michael sighs and then opens the door. “Trust me, Lopez, when it’s about fear, then I know everything in exacting detail. Like I said, this was your freebie. I have better things to do than save your ass next time you want to play comics in real life. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

She’s gone then, and Ella’s beyond confused. She’s seen a ghost (she hopes and that it’s not a hallucination) for most of her life. She’s seen the seediest side of Los Angeles and run from it now. She’s always been a believer in the Big Guy and seen the oddest freaking crime scene like at _The Mayan_ or that time with all the crazy feathers where Pierce, that jerk, shot at Chloe and Lucifer. Now, well, what she’s seen has to be impossible, but she’s still alive and a so-called angel is the reason.

No, not just any angel. St. Michael, basically a surly poker playing asshole, has saved her or so _she_ says.

Right, this is too loco for her to deal with tonight or possibly tomorrow. Ella has more than enough from her winnings to start looking for a real place of her own. For now? She’ll order a pizza, curl up with bad _Lifetime_ movies (the motel has basic cable), and try and forget that an angel saved her life.

Because she’s trying to be free not just of Pete and what he did, but of her own darkness. Of the weirdness that either follows her around or, worse, might come from deep in the recesses of her own mind. So, she won’t think about Michael at all.

Nope, not really.

Even as she flips the channels eventually to the Cartoon Networks and falls asleep thinking of avenging angels _and_ Amazon warriors, Ella will just force it all from her brain by morning. She’s going to be normal this time, damn it! And some random whatever Michael really is would be anything but ordinary.

Or sane.


	3. Hunger Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael has tried to stay away from Ella for two weeks, but after she interrupts his night out, things spiral.

It’s been two weeks since Michael bumped into Ella Lopez.

He’s kept away from the _El Dorado_ , avoided the _Vagabond_ too. It’s easy enough in this town to find other places to go, and he favors a casino in the intervening time that’s as far from the _El Dorado_ as it can be and still be inside the city limits. It’s Saturday, and Michael has already had a great day at his usual spot. He’s up an extra three grand for the day, but by the time he got back to his motel room, his right side is aching and he’s having trouble dragging himself into his room.

Once he gets open the door, Michael stumbles to the bed and bites his lower lip. Screaming would possibly get attention even in this flea-bitten place. He can admit if he were a human woman, he wouldn’t stay here. If he were a weak, defenseless mortal, he’d have gone anywhere else. But the price is right, and he’s not a fraction of what he once was, but he is _still_ and angel of the lord so the rooms that rent by the hour with tweakers and Dad knows what else coming in and out, are no threat to him. Still, if he screams with the pain---and oh it is so powerful that it’s making his right size seize---he might actually get an employee to check on him.

He doesn’t want questions.

Michael rolls onto his left side and curls into a ball as best as he can when a second wave hit, and it’s as he feared it was. The pain isn’t just coming from his weak side. No. Of course it’s not because Father works in mysterious ways and sees fit to layer his punishments, like Russian nesting dolls.

Oh and how creative Father was.

Yeah, Michael fucked up. He fucked up big time, and somehow even after _all_ Samael has done, he’s still the favorite. Dad can levy punishment on his twin, but hurt Sam, and feel the full Wrath of God. It makes precious little sense. But yes, his wings were taken first. A snap of Father’s fingers, and Michael no longer had wings. Poof. It took a week later before Father’s second dig came to fruition, until he heaved over a bathroom sink in Vegas like a wretched mortal and _everything_ changed. And it had hurt. Because muscle and form changing and rearranging, and organs appearing and disappearing…well those changes hurt.

And yet, that was nothing---shock aside---compared to the spasms that had started since Reno. Michael loathes them the most. The way he gets tired enough that his body twists and warps on itself, that the bubbling sprouts up under his right shoulder and it burns.

Fuck you so much Dad and Sam and even Amenadiel, it _burns_.

The phantom wings keep trying to push their way out and into this dimension, but they are _not_ there. There is no way for the wings to push forth, but the muscles in his shoulder still shiver and spasm and flex under his skin. It might take hours before this subsides. The first time these phantom pains racked him, he spent six hours on his side, screaming and cursing everything from Creation to his Father to _all of it_.

It has never quite been that bad again.

But after two agonizing hours, the pains finally subside. He’s sweaty and breathless when it’s over, but it _is_ finally over. Michael eyes the clock beside his bed. It’s not quite eleven p.m. Fuck. He had no intention of going out again, but he _needs_ to or the next phantom spasms will be on him tomorrow and they will last longer than now. He needs to feel stronger, and loathe as he is to admit this about himself, about his needs after too long on the mortal plane, he has to go.

Sitting up, he takes in shaky breaths and moves to his closet. He has precious little in it. While he makes good money running his scams, he sees no reason to waste it. But for what he has to do to keep the phantom pains away, there is a select wardrobe that helps. Within the hour, he’s dressed in jeans and a halter top---and dresses are still beyond him even if he always found robes far better than pants and maybe later or someday---and driving out to the most crowded club in Reno.

**

It is not hard to find a mark.

Michael has no vested interest in this. He is, at best, indifferent to humans. They are Father’s experiments, Samael’s vices, and Amenadiel’s betrayal, the sanctimonious first born who used to lecture for hours about how divinity and humanity should never mix. _Now_ , he’s abandoned the Silver City and the host for Chucky and that uptight bitch of a shrink. But Michael does not _hate_ humans. He kidnapped Chloe Decker and toyed with Dan’s mind. He never intended to harm them. He is _not_ his crazy mother, and it is flatly beneath him to injure or kill humans.

They just don’t interest him. _They exist, little more_. When the Host still appeared to them in the deserts of old and were tasked with Father’s miracles, then it was his duty to help and guide. Now, he mostly found them as the right tools to pit against his brother. But now, well, things are different.

Michael doesn’t dance at the club. That’s not his goal. Even if it were, after the day he’s had, he couldn’t move well enough out there to draw in the type of human he needs. On good days, and isn’t that a qualified term, he wouldn’t dance either. His right side…it will never quite cooperate with him, never bless him with fluid movement again. When he was more himself, that twisted version of Sam, it made him off-putting even outside of his talent---a lurching figure haunting with stiffened posture. As he is now, his right side makes him pitiable and at least the reactions from strangers is different.

He resents mortal pity, but he can use his perceived weakness to his advantage.

It doesn’t take so long---and Michael credits the low plunging top he’s chosen and aren’t human males oh-so-predictable---for a man to sidle up to him and invite himself to sit beside Michael. He has to smile as the stranger invites himself to the booth Michael’s staked out. He can feel the newcomer from here, the way he’s so like Ella’s shark a couple weeks ago. The bastard is already anxious about _getting caught_ , and it will serve Michael’s purposes.

The man is not a large one. He’s shorter than Michael is now and slim with a thinning hair line and a too shiny forehead, and the shirt he’s chosen seems like something from the 80s and the last time Michael ran business for Father on earth.

“Hello,” Michael purrs, forcing his own power and pain away. The hardest part of getting what he needs is bringing humans in. Close to him, they can feel his _wrongness_ , that rising fear eating through them. Michael works to shove it away, and in his efforts, he leans forward so that his cleavage is even more obvious. “You come here a lot.”

“First time.”  
  


Michael forces himself not to smirk. This is a lie. This amateur has hunted here before, has found women at least twice before in this bar, and Michael can read that anxiety off him. That maybe a hat trick is pushing his luck. _It is_. But only because Michael will make him sorry and not the police.

“Well, that’s cool. I’m from out of town and my girlfriend ditched me when she met a cute guy here.” Michael offers him a small smile, if he tries to make his too wide, then the scar stretches too much…is too obvious. _Thank you, Sam_. He extends his hand. “Michelle, and you are?”  
  


“Dave.”

It’s another lie, and Michael can feel that too, although Dave is getting harder to read as the man before him grows more comfortable with their interactions. He’s oh so confident about who is the prey here, isn’t he?

“Great, I…do you want to sit down?” Michael blinks up coquettishly at him, and yes, he _has_ practiced that before in the mirror. It took a week to get it down without looking like he was going to have convulsions, but he’s learning. “First, though, I’m totally sobering up. Could you get me a Cosmo?” He leans forward, ignoring the twinge in his bad side, and runs a hand down Dave’s nearest arm. “I promise, hon, I’ll make it worth your while.”

The maggot before him perks up and hurries to the bar. Michael leans back in his seat, and takes in measured breaths. His right shoulder is better (relative term), but he feels the rippling under his skin and knows he needs Dave to hurry the fuck up, or Michael will have another spasm. He does not want to be doubled over in public.

Dave doesn’t waste too much time and soon the man slides into place, more than that really. He’s practically trying to sit on Michael’s lap and watching Michael’s glass with an obvious hunger that’s practically telegraphing what Dave has already done to the Cosmo. Oh, foolish mortal, as if a little Rohypnol could fell one of the two angels who fashioned Creation.

Michael’s about to take a sip, and to get to a point where he can feign “confusion” enough to lure Dave out back and help get what he needs so badly, when a familiar and annoyingly perky face pops up.

Ella Lopez is faster than he’d have given a mortal credit for, and of all the places for her to show up, here and now is the _worst_ time.

“Michael! Hey, fancy seeing you here. Ugh, the Cosmos here suck. They do a mean mojito though.” She grabs his stem and Michael pulls back instinctively. He over extends his strength, and pulls the drink so hard that it splashes all over him, leaving his hair wet and the sticky concoction dripping down his chest and under his shirt and bra (and _that_ was a pain to learn how to put on, by the way)

Dave is on him then, trying to pat Michael dry, and the fumbling pawing of his chest is pathetic and obvious, and Michael is in no mood for it. Not now, and not when his time has run out. He can feel it in the way his right shoulder his starting to cramp, making his eyes water with the agony of it.

Michael doesn’t even bother to disguise the Celestial from this worm. His eyes flash gold and he forces his power over fear almost as high as it will go, not enough to make the bastard catatonic, but enough to make him wise up to _what_ Michael is.

“Fuck off!” Michael shouts and the human drops the napkins instantly and sets a land speed record darting from the table.

His arm is really tightening up on him now, and Michael cannot stop what’s about to happen to him. He won’t even be able to get out of the booth. Dad damn it.

Ella’s eyes are wide, and he honestly could give a shit if she felt a blowback of his powers aimed toward Dave the predator of the night. She’d cost him, and he didn’t ask for a tag along.

She shocks him a little, even with her eyes wide and the fear coiling through her. It is not of lilies and rot this time, but of this club with its stale beer and acridly piercing liquor and of _him_. But still Ella sits across from him in the booth and regards him with such wide, overwhelmed eyes.

“Dude, are you okay?”

Michael’s shaking again. His right shoulder is screaming, and he wants so badly to _let his wings out_. They are not there, but his shoulders twitch over and over, a reflex he cannot squelch when the pain gets like this, and he tries anyway to unfurl them. To make the pain stop.

But he cannot.

Ella reaches across the table and grabs his good hand but soon drops it like she’s been scalded. And fuck of course he has to deal with the noxious stench of lilies in his nose and something is around his throat and what even is that? Why is it hard to breathe now?

Michael doubles over and tries to wall himself off, tries to push his power down, but he hurts and in pain he has less control over fear than he normally does.

Ella still does not leave even though it should be obvious to her that she’s neither wanted nor invited here.

Another shoulder spasm and his muscles flex painfully, and it almost feels like his shoulder is separating in its efforts to let wings out that cannot come, may never even come back. He’s shivering and moaning, but there’s a soft tap on his shoulder.

Michael glances up in time to notice that Ella has used her clutch to get his attention. Well, at least this one _can_ learn. He is nothing to be touched; he has never been someone to be touched. And right now, for once, that does not bother him. He’s in too much pain to care.

“What’s wrong? Did he already lace your first drink?”

Michael takes in a shuddering breath. “I can’t be drugged, Lopez. What part of angel did you not get the first time?”

She nods and while she looks like a bobblehead doing it, at least Ella seems to be understanding what he is, and the power thrumming through him. “You’re still really hurt. I mean, I saw you come in and then that guy screams skeevy. I watched him get your drink and he poured something in it before he left the bar. I was just trying to help, Michael. I’m guessing you’re new to being on earth and, uh, a woman too.”

“I’ve had several months to adjust,” he gasps out between clenched teeth. “I _wanted_ that weasel. You think I didn’t know what he was? I can feel him and all his anxieties, same way I read your attacker, Lopez. It was intentional.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah, genius, I can’t get drugged.”

Ella frowns. “Oh, so you’re doing the vigilante thing and told me not to. Is that it?”

And if he weren’t racked with pain, Michael would be staring back at her with gold eyes and the fury of an avenging angel. Is she serious? Ella Lopez is a tiny---really tiny—mortal whose red too many comic books. He shaped the cosmos and threw his brother---freaking Satan whether Samael admits his own guilt and cruelty or not---from Heaven. They are not equals.

Not even quote.

He shudders again with another spasm and when he talks, his voice barely croaks out. “No, that’s not it. I…I needed…”

He cannot exactly explain it in mortal terms. The best explanation is that when he uses his power, it strengthens him… _energizes him._ It gives him enough strength to compensate for the loss of his extra divinity and his wings, to keep his spasms from leaving him a crying, shivering mess. An incoherent one if it gets bad enough. But yes, energy is what he needs, and to get that, he must elicit fear.

In a blunt, mortal term, he must feed.

“What?” Ella presses and he can feel her fear roiling offer her worse. It’s a weird, layered set of worries, and only some of it is _about_ him. Michael finds himself shocked even through his agony to feel that some of her fear is _for him_. Dad knows that has never happened to him before. “What was this?”

“I need to scare someone, Lopez. Badly. It makes me…it takes the edge off my injuries,” he gasps out.

He will not explain more---can’t really---because to admit what it really is, that an angel of the lord, _an archangel still technically_ , has been reduced to lurking in shadows and scaring mortals witless to stay sane himself. It is monstrous. He knows it. It may not be the scarred, fucked up red skin of his brother, but it is no less profane, and again, Father’s punishments are always layered and always spiral.

Her hand is back over his and he can feel the fucking hands on his throat from nowhere and the lilies are gagging him too, but still Ella holds.

His eyes widen at her, and he shakes his head. “You want to let go now. What I do…you know it’s not pleasant.” Fucking understatement of the millennium there.

“But I messed up what you were doing,” she counters, and she’s shaking too

He can _see_ it all so clearly as he takes in her fears, too tired and sick and exhausted to stop now, not when it strengthens him, not when it makes the spasms _stop_. He _is_ in that sunny yellow duplex, that deceptive building with its cheery demeanor, but hiding a hot house of death and paralytics underneath. Some wretch---some utter pissant of an excuse for a man---is over him and squeezing so hard. Michael’s vision swims because he’s seeing as Ella saw it, and she’s passing out---she _almost_ passed out then. It’s luck and the frantic grasp of a spilled syringe that she plunges last minute into Pete Daly’s chest.

Michael feels her fear so fragrantly now, as it shifts from living it to relishing it. Ella’s pale and white before him, and her chin is trembling. She can’t really see him, as her eyes have glazed over like a scared rabbit about to be eaten by a wolf. And it _feels good_. Dear Dad help him and whatever has been made of him now; this feels so right and the pain is gone.

Michael forces himself to pull away from her, and when he does, they are both left gasping for different reasons. He’s reveling in the lack of pain again and the power flaring through him, and Ella’s gone catatonic across from him, not even blinking.

The relief he feels is short-lived as something hot and sharp bites his stomach. Fuck, he’s really messed this up.

“Ella? Hey _Lopez_ , can you hear me?”

She’s whimpering, and he’s trying _not_ to use his powers any longer, but he can still feel what she feels, and it tears viciously at him that this is his fault. Yes, Ella was stupid and grabbed him when he warned her not to, but it’s still his power---his _needs---_ that have done this to her.

He was the second brightest of God’s angels once. And now…

Just look at him.

Michael sighs and offers her as calming a smile as he can. “Lopez, come on, snap out of it. You’re not _there_ any longer.” It is long past the time in his life where he can show her glowing wings and utter a simple “Be not afraid” to calm her. But he needs to get her out of here. The club has been loud and in the din no one has noticed their respective spells at this side booth, but he needs to help her. “Hey,” he says, leaning forward and she shoves herself against the booth as hard as she can. Michael winces but tries to pretend the rebuff doesn’t hurt him. “I won’t hurt you. I…look, my place is a mess and it’s not safe for mortals, too crime-infested.” He laughs but there’s no humor in it. “I’m not exactly allergic to lead projectiles.” _Just ask Chloe Decker_. “Ella, are you still at the _Vagabond_?”

She manages to speak again, but it’s so soft and quiet and stilted that if Michael wasn’t gifted with Celestial senses, he wouldn’t have heard her at all.

“No, I have an apartment.” She’s shivering harder and he’s having a problem blocking the raw elemental terror in her mind. Oh Father, what has he done? “Why?”

“Let’s get you home again, Lopez.”

“I…” and her voice is so very tiny. “Don’t hurt me.”

He stands, and his strength is at its max, well for an exiled and wingless angel it is, and he comes to Ella’s side of the booth. Michael makes no effort to touch her, but he holds up his hands---palms flat---and stays very still. “Ella, look, get me your keys. I won’t touch you, but you have to walk to the parking lot with me. I…let’s get you home.”

She’s shaking so hard, he almost worries her chattering teeth might chip and _can_ that happen to humans? Fuck if he knows. “But you aren’t going to do _that_ again, right?”

Michael wants to scream his frustration. He was doing his best to avoid Ella Lopez and any even peripheral ties to Samael. He was in his own territory in this city, and the last thing he wanted was to use her like this. If she’d just left him well enough alone tonight…if she hadn’t been so stupid as to touch him when he’s _like this_.

“I won’t. I’m a liar. Like I lie all the fucking time, so I’ll let you know that, but I don’t want to hurt you and I can control it right now. I just couldn’t before. I am not going to hurt you, Lopez. Now,” he says, stepping back from the booth. “Let’s go.”

**

She’s been curled up on the small, striped loveseat in her apartment for hours. Michael’s been so desperate for noise---and he _never_ thought that would be a problem around Ella---that he’s turned the TV to some inane reality show. But she’s not focused on it, and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know anything about humans, just that his so-called gift does _not_ match well with them, and that’s why…well, besides usual disinterest, Michael has avoided Father’s pets for a reason.

He’s scared.

How odd that feeling is.

Of course, Michael can feel fear. It plunged into the pit of his stomach when Sam tried to yank him to Hell as well and did ruin his wing in the process. It bit hard into him when Father came to Earth and stopped his fight with his brothers, but that was a simple, building dread…a discomfort in anticipation of what was to come. And terror. He knows that well too, even as the Sword of God. He knew it the minute the first phantom wing spasm hit, and he feared they would _never stop_.

He feels it now.

  
Not just for Ella because Michael knows little about humans, but he knows this is far from how humans act. But he’s scared for himself, truly. If his brothers think he did this on purpose, if Samael and Amenadiel think that Michael has intentionally set out to destroy Ella, then they will find him, and he knows his brother. The Devil will tear him apart.

And there’s not that much left of him to ruin.

Sighing and desperate, Michael fishes the mug of tea he’s made from the microwave, and then settles it on Ella’s coffee table. She startles and pushes herself against the sofa until he retreats with deliberately slow, quiet steps to the far corner of her modest hovel.

“I thought that might help? I wasn’t sure. I don’t…you had tea, so I figured you drink it.”

Ella blinks slowly and at least she seems to register the things around her. Reaching out she final grabs the tea. Blowing on it, she brings it to her lips and takes a sip. She blanches a little, and it’s the first facial expression he’s seen on her in hours. At least that’s progress. “This doesn’t have any sugar.”

“Well, I’m not a short order cook, Lopez. I did my best.”

He will not mention that he overheated the first mug so badly it cracked. Cooking isn’t his thing either.

She starts to laugh, her fear warping it into an absentminded cackle, that stabs at Michael’s chest in a way he doesn’t anticipate. He thinks this must be guilt. Damn it; he tried to warn her but it’s still his fault, his burden because he _is wrong_ , and he’s trapped her but not really fit to be among mortals, not as he is now.

“Ella? Are you…do I take you to a hospital? I really don’t know how humans work.”

Her hysterics peter out, and she manages a few more sips of her tea. “I think it’s better. I’m not spacing out.”

“Oh,” he says, not sure exactly what she means.

She sets the mug down and looks at him, but Michael stays firmly planted in his corner, as far from Ella as he can be. He will not hurt her again, and he won’t let her in whatever naïve idiocy she labors under reach out for him. That’s the mother of all crap ideas.

“You’re that Saint Michael?”

He sighs. So they’re back to the basics, are they? “I am, sort of. I mean, I used to be more impressive. Once, long ago, I was the head of Father’s legions. Then, I was injured when Satan fell. He gave me quite the parting shot so my wings and side. Recently, and I am _not_ getting into it so don’t dig, but a few months ago I made some epic, Biblical level fuck-ups, and Father punished me. We established that.”

She nods and at least seems to have stopped shaking by now. That’s good, right? That and the full sentences have to be good.

“Yeah, that’s why…you don’t have wings, right?”

“Not now, no.” He snorts and vaguely gestures to his waist. “Father has added insult to injury, of course. For the duration, I’m lacking more than just my wings.”

She focuses on him, and he can tell she’s trying to ferret out an answer, make the puzzle pieces fit. He saw her do this on the one case they worked together (not that Ella knows this). He isn’t sure he likes being the specimen under her gaze. She barged into his life, damn it, and not the other way around.

“Look, dude, I spent twelve years in Catholic school. I was on the path as a novitiate for almost a year. I’ve never heard _anything_ ever about St. Michael, um, you.”

“Yes, I am that Michael. If I say it a few hundred more time will that sink in?” he asks, a gruff annoyance working its way into his tone.

“Just…what was going on back at the bar. I deserve to know because I’m pretty sure nowhere in Catechism was like ‘Oh hey, Michael touches you and you want to die.’”

He does not flinch. He doesn’t. He’s just standing straighter in his corner, not startled by her words. She’s familiar, sure. She’s the only person he’s had repeat conversations with in months, okay. She’s still just a mortal, and she is _lesser_ than he is, even now. Her words and stark truths do not hurt him.

They can’t.

Not really.

“Angels each have something they do. I have a brother who can control time, and a sister who’s the literal Angel of Death.” And he would be speaking to Rae Rae soon, even if he hadn’t yet gotten through to her with prayers. “One who could see any pattern in events and predict the future with unerring clarity. I have always controlled fear. I didn’t ask for it. No one would fucking ask for it. It has gotten worse since I was punished,” he admits. Michael looks down at his hands and tries to ignore Ella’s big-eyed scrutiny.

“You were shaking so bad in the booth and you looked like you were in pain and I was scared and---”

“You are an idiot, Lopez. If you saw a lion freaking out with a thorn in its paw, that you’d try and take it out to help?”

“If I were Daniel sure!” She smirks at him, and Lopez really is a groupie for Dad, isn’t she? “I was trying to help.”

“I can’t be helped. I have a routine and a system. It keeps things controlled. You fucked that up, and then you _touched_ me when I warned you not to.”

“You were in pain!”

He sighs and looks up at her. “Level of definition. I have been in pain since the Rebellion. This is a worse degree, sure, but you know what they say: there’s no basement in Hell.”

Ella frowns at him, and he almost preferred her catatonic. “What was going on? In the alley, you weren’t like that.”

  
“My wings are gone, but the muscles underneath in my shoulders are _not_. They spasm for hours and it is taxing and drains me. I lack the resilience I usually do tooling around on earth.” He spits out the words distastefully. “I’m less resilient here, okay? But they ache and if I…If I really scare the shit out of someone, I feel better, have the strength to deal with it. Happy? If you’d left me alone, I’d have pulled what I did on you with Dave the incel. Get it? It was reflexive what I did, once I get that bad, and you _touched me_.” He shakes his head and runs a hand through his long, tangled hair. “Never do that again. I can’t help that I’m not safe.”

Ella considers that and her eyes grow shiny. Fuck, he doesn’t need her pity. He needs no one’s pity, and after his tantrum in Los Angeles, he does not deserve it. Even Michael knows that much. Ella wouldn’t feel sorry for him one bit if she knew what he’d done to her friends, to the way he’d led Chloe on and tried to take advantage of her, to kidnapping her…to _any_ of it.

“So it always spasms?”

“Eventually,” he says, shrugging like this wasn’t the most naked he’s ever felt around anyone before. “I can usually go a week or two without it, but then…” he looks away again, at the paint peeling on the popcorn ceiling. “I need a victim.”

He never has said that before, not even to himself. A mark, a source, a target. Sure. But in his head, he’s never admitted what he is now, the predator he’s been rendered by his Father and Dad’s great punishments.

“So you were gonna choose an asshole like that roofie guy?”

He nods. “I always do. It feels at least less terrible to do. They have it coming.”

Michael does not understand the broad smile that breaks across her face. “Cool! We’re totally on the same page, dude.”

“What?” he asks, gaping at her. “Now I’m the confused one.”

“Good, cause dealing with angels and fear and all of it is a huge crash course, _socio_ ,” Ella replies, reaching for her tea again. “So, okay, you’re like a fear vampire, right?”

He recoils at such an asinine term. First, the undead, not a thing. Second, he’s still one of the Host. He is not Sam, and he is _not_ Fallen. He’s just banged up, and that’s a question of degrees and nothing more. He’s been banged up since before the Garden of Eden. He’s used to it.

Mostly.

“I am an angel of the Lord,” he counters. “I’m just on probation.” Now if that’s for a century, a millennium, or until the next Ice Age, Michael has fuck all idea. “I’m not a---” His voice fails him because the rest of that sentence needs to remain unsaid.

He can’t bear the reality of it.

Ella stands and takes a few steps closer to him, but he freezes up, as if he should be the one afraid. He is though because Ella has no common sense to go with her enthusiasm and she does _not_ listen. She’s liable to reach out and grab him again, and that would be a disaster.

“That’s what the Big Guy did, right?” She asks, her mind pulling it all together. “This whole…the way your powers are out of whack and hurting you too…that’s the real punishment.”

Michael crosses his arms over his chest and it is still distracting to feel the roundness of his breasts there. Dad’s so good at mindfucks on top of mindfucks. “Father is good at smiting.”

“You don’t want to do it, do you?”

Michael snorts. “I didn’t want to do it to you. I don’t really give a shit if some skeevy asshole at a bar gets what’s coming to him, no. I’m really sorry. I did try and warn you.”

She nods and takes small, tentative steps until she’s within a foot of him. “But you don’t want this, right?”

“Well, when Dad makes something final, it is, until He changes his mind.” He sighs and gestures to his face and shoulders. “This is what I am now, and I’m adapting. I’m sorry you got fucked up in the process. Honestly, it’s best I move on. I was thinking of going out to Atlantic City anyway.”

Ella considers that. “I’m subletting.”

He blinks, confused by the non-sequitur. “What?”

“I can go with you!”

Michael starts to laugh but stops when large, earnest brown eyes are looking back at his. “Wait, you’re serious? Lopez, you touched me at the wrong moment, and you ended up catatonic for hours. Remember that lion metaphor? Still a thing, chica. You don’t want near me.” _He didn’t want near himself either_. “Suddenly we’re going to what? Road trip to New Jersey and be roomies? Do you hear yourself?”

She crosses her arms over her chest and mirrors his posture. “I think it’s a good idea, actually.”

“How?”

“Look, a lot of terrible shit just happened to me, and I know you felt it when you touched me. You _saw_.”

Michael lies often; he has not stupid sense of puffed up, so-called honor like Samael. However, with this tiny woman, he finds he has no real interest in sugar coating anything. “I did. I’m sorry you got hurt on the job. I’m serious, though, you need to go home, Ella. I’m not a friend you want.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

He quirks his head and stares down at her. “Okay, I’ll bite. All I got is you’re a masochist who wants a partner to break the bank in Atlantic City on Black Jack and poker. Am I wrong?”

Ella nods. “I don’t want to feel weak anymore.”

“Well being a possible accidental snack for the Angel of Fear is gonna have the opposite effect.”

“Look, we have a lot in common.”

He looks at her and snorts. She’s changed from her clubbing outfit and back into her pajamas. She had enough sense of herself to do that much, even if she went through the motions like a zombie. But this little ball of energy, blunted as her sunny disposition is now in Reno, is still nothing like him. She’s wearing PJs with some type of anime character on them, the massive eyes are a giveaway, but fuck if he knows which one exactly or cares.

“I doubt it.”

“Look, you need to…if you have to let that out, then doing it on guys who are gonna hurt people anyway is a good idea. I was doing the same thing back at the _El Dorado_.”

“And you got your ass handed to you, so you’re welcome for me saving your ass.”

“And I saved yours.” She blushes then, obviously thinking better of her mistake of letting Dave slip away first. “I think we could make a good team!”

“For vengeance and gambling?”

“Look, I don’t want to be afraid anymore. At least you didn’t mean it when that happened, and lesson learned, not helping you, uh, feed---”

  
“Let’s _not_ call it that.”

“Okay, you need, um, an outlet, and I just need to deal with what happened.”

“So vigilantism is gonna help? Lopez, those comic books aren’t real.”

Kind of. He’s just not going to explain the multiverse and all its eccentricities to her now. He’s already blown her mind twice in as many weeks. As far as Ella Lopez knows Wonder Woman and Batman are not real, and it needs to stay that way. Not like he can pop over into another earth anyway, not without wings and his full Demiurgic birthright.

“I need something. You need something, and I just…can we try?”

He is not sold on this idea. It is a terrible one, and it will somehow, even across a continent, get back to Samael. Michael knows this, but, at the same time, he always makes the worst choices. End of the day, he has a hard time saying no, even when he knows better. Just because he can be methodical doesn’t mean he will stick to his plans.

This is like agreeing to partner up with Scrappy Doo; it’s that obvious.

And yet, Ella has felt everything he can do, and she wants to stay. Granted, she’s desperate and spiraling and is clearly going off the deep end if she’s going to think of herself as a vigilante. But if he’s not there, she’ll just do it anyway---Michael can tell---and if she dies, then somehow he’ll _still_ get blamed for it.

If he keeps her alive, then Samael won’t end him.

Works for him.

For now.

  
Besides, he really is tired of being alone. This is something. It’s a crazy, stupid, desperate idea, but both of them have no other options.

Michael sighs and runs a hand through his hair once again. “Alright. Probation. We go to Atlantic City, see how this idiotic idea of yours won’t work, then we split our winnings and part ways. Got it?”

“It’ll work!” She says, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and he’s rarely met a human that reminds him more of a golden retriever puppy in his immortal life. “Like I said, you, um, have needs, and I just…it helps when someone like Pete gets hurt.” She sighs. “It helps if I stop them from hurting someone else, okay? I can actually sleep.”

Michael considers that and gives her a brisk nod. “Alright, deal for now. You get packed, and I get the wheels. Because me? I used to have wings, Lopez. I am _not_ flying coach.”

If possible, her eyes grow wider at this idea. “Sweet, road trip. I know just the place to boost the right car.” She turns and hurries to her room even before Michael can respond.

Instead, his answer echoes in the empty den:

“Wait when did you learn to steal cars?”


	4. Scrappy Doo and the Fear Vampire Hit the Open Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Ella steal a car together for their trip to Atlantic City.

**Chapter Four**

Michael meets Ella at her apartment the next day. After Ella proposed one of the dumbest ideas Michael ever heard---and he spent so much one-on-one time with Samael forming the universe, so he knows from dumb ideas---Michael was too shocked to prod much. Honestly, after watching her start shoving clothes in a couple suitcases for a bit, he left. Ella confused him and overwhelmed him, and now he’d somehow been conned into agreeing to a three thousand mile road trip with her.

Maybe he just should have agreed to fly in an airplane after all.

Or maybe he should have just left Reno two weeks ago when he pulled his Good Samaritan act and left Ella Lopez in the dust. She’s nothing but trouble, and he can tell that much about her too. If anything happens to her while she’s under his care, Samael will end him and yet…she touched him. She _knew_ what he was and had felt the very worst of what he could do when he was so uncontrolled. And it was after that that she’d suggested being road trip buddies. Possibly vigilantes, but Michael was hoping to talk her out of that.

He’d never had that before, never had an experience like that, even when his levels of “totally creepy” as Rae Rae had put it more than once had been more controlled, even then all his siblings had been nervous around him. Dear Father, even the Favorite was scared of Michael deep down, which was annoying because they were twins and Samael should have been able to see past that.

So he was, all things considered, _weak_.

A little human contact of all things---and mortals had never merited his attention before---and he was willing to do whatever Ella suggested. Well, it wouldn’t continue that way. She was the human and he was (mostly) the archangel. She’d listen to him. It wouldn’t be all her rules until New Jersey.

Nope.

Michael slides out of his cab and glares at the driver. Pulling on the man’s fears of spiders (common, boring, yawn), he’s able to get the man speeding away before the credit cards he doesn’t have are even asked for. Good, free’s the best price for anything anyway. It doesn’t take much for him to bound up the stairs to Ella’s modest place and knock on her door. She pulls it open and greets him with a wide smile.

This leave Michael doing a double take.

No one is ever happy to see the Angel of Fear. Well, at least until now.

She has three suitcases and a duffle bag over her shoulder. Currently, she’s sporting her usual jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt. This one has a baby sloth on it yawning and something about hating Mondays. And this is the woman who thinks she can go and attack scum at bars and fashion herself an avenging angel in the spirit of Remiel. But he couldn’t see the Angel of the Hunt in such a cutesy t-shirt. Dear Dad, he was going to have to work overtime to keep this one from getting herself hurt. When he lived in New Jersey decades ago, he’d heard a frequent saying, one that seemed to apply to Ella’s would-be vigilante side. The girl is already trying to write checks with her mouth and her actions that her body can’t cash.

Apparently, that’s what she has half of the Demiurge for.

She bats her eyes at him and something small flip flops in his stomach. Michael ignores it. He’s just here to make sure she doesn’t get killed and because, honestly, he has nothing else to do. Anything else is just…he’s off kilter from his needs yesterday and from being caught flat footed, that’s all.

“Dude, great! My bags are freaking heavy.” She considers him, her eyes lingering over his damaged side and then stills. “Can you get the duffle and the smallest suitcase has wheels so…”

Michael narrows his eyes at her and takes the heaviest one in his left hand out of spite. “I have a weak side, but I’m not a mortal. You should try remembering that more, Lopez. Not to blow your mind,” _much_ , “but I literally fashioned planets. I can carry a suitcase.”

“Oh, well, my bad,” she offers, still taking up the two other suitcases and he takes the hint to slide the duffle over his right shoulder. “I was trying to be nice.”

He rolls his eyes. That he doesn’t need. No one’s made that effort for him before. It’s ancillary now. Besides, there’s a line between kindness and pity, and Michael loathes the latter. Better to be hated than pitied, and maybe, alright _definitely_ he drove siblings off in the Silver City after Sam ruined him. He didn’t need those looks, still doesn’t.

“Look,” he says, as they descend the steps. “you did a very stupid and, okay, helpful thing last night. You’re a painfully good person, Lopez.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing,” she huffs as they get to the bottom of the stairwell. Michael falls behind her as she leads the way to her car. “How can it be bad?”

“Because you’re the type who put everyone else ahead of you and your own needs. A martyr type. I can tell. There’s _no_ percentage in that. Also, don’t…I’m still the Celestial here.” _After a fashion and mostly on a technicality…_ “I’m not weak.”

“I didn’t say that,” Ella replies over her shoulder. “I was just trying to be nice. I figured you didn’t want my heaviest one.”

“Don’t assume shit, chica. I’m still stronger than any human has ever been, okay?”

Ella turns a sharp right and darts across the parking lot, and he follows suit. They arrive in front of a Mini-Cooper in the parking lot, and Michael shudders. On good days, his right shoulder aches, and he can’t get pins and needles, but he’s still tall, even in this shape, and he has little interest in his legs staying bunched up for hours on end in this so-called car.

“You can steal cars, and this is what you boosted?”

Ella rolls her eyes. “No, I’ve been renting stuff. I guess me being all catatonic…you weren’t really paying attention in the dark and the total craziness to what car we took here. Anyway, I’m gonna return this and then I’ll show you where we’re getting our wheels from. For a road trip like this? We’re gonna want space and some horsepower under the hood.”

“Exactly,” he agrees, helping her shove her bags in her trunk.

He rushes back to the stairwell and grabs his own slightly battered blue duffle back and a backpack. He packs light and owns little, which is a good thing as Lopez has come packing. Michael gets his few earthly possessions in the cramped back seat and then scrunches up passenger side.

“Yeah, we better not go the rest of the country like this. I’ll be a pretzel.”

“Dude, I know what I’m doing,” she says, as she pulls out.

  
Michael has a bet going with himself, how long Lopez can go without talking. Granted, he’s seen her do that for hours just last night but that doesn’t really count. His powers threw her for a loop. Normally, Sam’s the only other being he knows who can out-talk Ella. He mentally gets to thirty-five seconds before she turns down some Dad-awful pop song on the radio and looks to her side.

“So, how many planets have you made?”

Michael chuckles to himself. “I had a feeling this was coming.”

“What?” she asks, pulling out of the complex.

“That this is going to be a long game of twenty questions or more like Celestial trivia.”

“Well, you have to give me some credit, Mike. I’m only human.”  
  


“You said it, Lopez, not me.”

“And I was almost a nun, so this is a big freaking deal. Right now, I have an angel with me, and I want to know everything. I mean, what’s God like?”

  
He bites back the immediate response that Dad’s an asshole and way prone to wrath. They have a _long ass_ trip ahead of them, and they won’t get to Atlantic City if he crushes her faith in the first four miles. Instead, he tries to offer what he can.

“I thought mortals were all big about faith because it came without proof, just on dedication and hope. Does it change things now that you know?”

“Well,” she considers as she makes her way out of the neighborhood they’ve been in and to the highway. “kind of? I mean, it’s the Big Guy! I’ve always wanted to know about Him and now I can without having to wait. That’s pretty tempting, Mikey.”

He grimaces. “No nicknames.”

“Sure whatever. I just mean that no hints at all?”

Michael considers her. “I think some things aren’t for you to know, and not in a big, cosmic order kind of way. Obviously, I wouldn’t be like I am right now if I gave a crap about the rules, you know?”

“But?”

“Well, think about it this way, Lopez. The Big Guy is your idol, kind of literally. He’s larger than life and mythic and everything to you. To me, he’s still my father. I mean, if someone came to you as your mom’s biggest fangirl, would you only have glowing things to say about her?”

Ella frowns and turns her eyes back to the road. “I love my mamí.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t. But you’re not gonna tell your mom’s hypothetical fan about that time she smacked you at Christmas for trying to sneak cookies or was on your ass about your homework one night till you cried or whatever it is human kids do, right?”

“No, of course not.”

“Exactly, so sure, Dad’s big and awe-consuming and designed the entire multiverse. I spent billions---literally---years singing his praises along with my siblings. The hype is earned. But he’s not theoretical to me either. He’s my _father_.” Michael laughs bitterly. “As you can see, we’re not having a good patch. So whatever I say will be brutally honest, and, Lopez, you’re not ready to hear it.”

“I…so He’s not all love and light and wisdom?”

Michael snorts. “He thinks He is. When I was a younger and actually real angel, I thought He was. I dunno. A lot of my siblings still love him and sing His praises. It could just be me. But, yeah, some ground rules so I don’t disappoint you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, because I can lie and I do, but sometimes especially when it concerns Dad, I’m pretty blunt.” He sighs and crosses his arms over his chest, and even after close to four months, it feels weird to have breasts. To lack other things. _And thank you Father for that_. “I won’t say I haven’t earned being punished. I did pull some serious shit lately.” He glares at her curious eyes back on him. “No, not going to elaborate, chica. Anyway, He changed my gender, took my wings, and has left me in pain so crippling that I have to do something…” he pauses then because his reality is horrifying and degrading and beneath the Host in every way. “…that I don’t like doing, okay? So, no, to me? Dad’s not great.” He sighs and shrugs his good shoulder. “He does love humans a lot, though. I think to you, Dad would be really positive.”

Ella looks back to the road, but she’s not sitting up as high in her seat now. “But the Big Guy can be abusive, huh?”

“You said you were a novitiate for a while. Did you not read the Old Testament? That’s Dad’s style, at least with the Host.” He glances at her and sighs again. “Lopez, look, I think that there are some rules for this. If I didn’t want to talk to you, then I wouldn’t have agreed to anything this idiotic.”

“Gee, thanks dude.”

“But a few things I can’t talk about and mostly cause they’d hurt you more than me. Dad’s off limits. I do think he loves humans a lot more than us angels, so good on you guys. But He and I are kind of not talking right now.” _Understatement_. “So I don’t have much good to say. I don’t want to talk about my half-brother either. I never met him, don’t know him, didn’t keep track of him in the Silver City.”  
  


“You mean Heaven?”

  
“Exactly, so I’m not a good source on Jesus.” He looks back out the window and notes that they’re passing row after row of used car lots by now. “And I can’t…I pulled some serious shit. I get that. I had my reasons, but I’m _like_ this now, punishment levied, and I can’t change it, not at all. So, I don’t want to talk about what I did to really piss Dad off.” He squirms in his seat and readjusts his legs as best as he can, but if he were mortal, they’d be asleep. Badly asleep. “You stick to those parameters---no God, nothing about the Lamb, and no twenty questions about why I’m being punished. You stick with that, and the rest will be smooth like cream cheese.”

“But if I want to ask about the universe and making it and about all you’ve seen cause you’ve been around like forever?”

He shrugs. “Stories, I’ve got. You can have them. So, that’s the deal, Lopez. Sound good?”

She nods. “Cool, I just…I’m sorry that the Big Guy---”

He rolls his eyes. “We barely got started on this. Lopez, Dad’s complicated. I’ve done my share of bad shit and I have had more than enough karma coming my way, okay? I don’t…I’m sure if He ever met you, Dad would love you.”

He doesn’t actually know that. Dad’s inscrutable and for a while been pretty absent. He was bull shitting to his idiot siblings about having Father’s ear, and the desperate Fledglings bought it completely. However, the last of them to hear from Dad was Amenadiel when he was ordered to make Sam a little girlfriend. Michael just saw the open opportunity in radio silence to play the right angle. Until Dad popped up in the precinct and essentially cursed him, he hadn’t talked to Father in decades. And, again, Michael wouldn’t call what they did have in L.A. a conversation as much as being called on the carpet and summarily dismissed. He has no idea if his father would like Ella at all.

However, the Devil and the First Born seemed to enjoy her. That had to say something for her attention-grabbing abilities. She’s not awful to be around. So, yeah, one of Dad’s better humans, for sure.

Ella beams back at him as she pulls into a used car lot to the right of the highway. She parks the Mini-Cooper behind a bush and takes a deep breath. “That’s cool, though. I’m glad the Big Guy would like me.”

Michael offers her a tight smile. Usually, he lies like he talks, but he hasn’t had much interest in doing it with Ella. But a little white lie won’t hurt. Besides, every other Celestial (and whatever the fuck Sam is now) that she’s met seems to like her. Seems a logical guess. It’s not like Ella will meet Dad any time soon. Even in the Silver City, and when Lopez dies after like fifty more years, Father tends to barely show himself to the Host, let alone humans.

But, sure, if they crossed paths, Dad might actually find her amusing at least.

Sometimes, even Michael does.

“See, and that concludes all the Heavenly Father talk for as long as we hang out, chica.”

“ _Tenemos un trato_. I won’t forget, okay? No God, no Jesus, and I won’t dig about your punishment, cool?”

“Great, now, we’re ditching your rental car?”

“Meh, the lot owners will find it, figure it out, call Avis or whatever. What we’re here for? That’s totally the silver tuna!”

He laughs, and Michael finds he does that with Ella a lot. Hell, the fact he does it at all near her is novel. It’s probably why he tolerates her at all.

“What even is that? I don’t deal in fish.”

She slides out of the car, and Michael dos the same, happy to be happy to release his legs and no longer be scrunched. He may not tower quite as much as he used to, but almost six feet was still not made for a car that tiny. More like a freaking roller skate if you ask him.

“Silver Tuna? _Home Alone_? Hello!” she blinks at him. “Oh, I guess you guys don’t get movies in Heaven much.”

“My pop culture knowledge comes in pocket. I was doing an errand for Father in the early 80s or, well, at least when Gabriel handed it out, the word was it was Father’s Will,” he corrects. “I spent almost twenty years in New York in the 50s and 60s. But, no, I guess ‘silver tunas’ missed me.”

Ella frowns, and he can tell she wants to ask him what he was doing on earth for so long. Michael should have made that the fourth rule. It was stupid, what he’d done, and settling with a mortal had been an utter disaster. Twenty years was is a blink for a Celestial. Not so for mortals and they change and grow frail so fast. And it just…the way he _didn’t_ change had come between them.

But she seems to think better of yet more twenty questions and instead gestures broadly to the lot. All the cars on it are classics, restored beauties from the 60s and 70s. Michael remembers seeing land yachts like this decades ago in Brooklyn---the long sleek bodies, the tail fins, the exaggerated and ornamental bubbled head and tail lights. He has to give Lopez credit; the girl has some taste.

“So, we’re going to help ourselves to a real car, huh?”

She nods eagerly, her jaunty ponytail bouncing as she does it. “Yup, got it in one. I was gonna do this anyway when I moved onto the next town.”

Michael eyes her. Nothing about this whole caper reflects what he knows so far about Sam’s pet, but he admits he didn’t really get to know her long in Los Angeles. She’s craftier than he assumed, and Michael regrets deeply now using Espinoza and not her. If he had, maybe he’d have gotten away with his plans instead.

“Well, aren’t you the deviant.”

“Dude, I used to boost cars with my brothers all the time in Detroit. We’d sell em to chop shops and it was a good racket.”

“Black Jack and car theft. Interesting.”

She frowns at him. “Huh.”

“What?”

“I thought an angel would have more to say about how wrong all that is.”

“I’m on probation, and I want leg space to New Jersey.” He follows her as she walks briskly to the far end of the lot. No one is around on this Monday afternoon, and Michael realizes that this is deliberate. She _knew_ if they came here today, they wouldn’t be interrupted. “You’ve been casing this place?”

“Oh yeah. I knew when I got to Reno I need to trade up. Took me a week to find the right lot and another to figure out both which car I wanted _and_ the hours and shifts. We won’t be bothered.”

He gives a low whistle. “I think I like your style, Scrappy Doo.”

She glares at him but lets it drop. “Sure, whatever, but feast your eyes on this!” Ella rounds a corner and reveals the Impala beside her. It’s early sixties, though Michael’s basing that on memory and not on overwhelming expertise of mortal vehicles.

The car is long with a roomy trunk that will more than accommodate even her bags. Its end comes with extended, dramatic fins and its color is an eye catching turquoise laced through with sparkles and other flecks of paint. The top’s a convertible, a creamy white that compliments the base, and glancing through the window, Michael notes that the bench seats and even the dashboard are all original—that or restored with loving attention to detail. It’s a beautiful car and one, he notes happily, that has ample leg room for him (not that Lopez needs it for herself).

“Silver tuna!” she exclaims, as if he’ll have any better clue what that means as she speaks.

“Sure, we’ll go with this. It’s a beauty.”

“You can drive stick right?”

“I didn’t drive much in New York, no need, but I picked enough up. I can handle it.”

She leans again the car and crosses her arms over her chest. After everything that happened last night, Michael’s amazed that she glares at him not just with frustration but with authority. She’s felt all that he is, and yet Lopez can give him the stink eye as if he’s not fear incarnate.

That seals it. Sam’s pet scientist is bent.

Like way bent.

“Dude, be honest with me. This is a delicate baby. If you’re just gonna grind the clutch and stall her out, I need to know. Then, I’ll handle her to New Jersey.”

“Lopez, I’ve got this. I can definitely pull my driving weight. I mean, I was driving cars like this…” Though none ever as beautiful. “Since before your parents were even born. You can start the trip, and if you want to test me out in a parking lot or back road later to prove my word, fine, but I can handle manual.”

She nods. “Good because I do not want to strip this beauty’s gears. She’s totally the baby I’ve dreamed about since forever.”

“With a five-finger discount?” he asks, more amused than anything else.

“Don’t you know it.” Her eyes dart diagonally across the lot to a cherry red mustang and she frowns. “That one was a runner up. I really liked it.” Ella hesitates for a moment, and Michael leans closer to her, studying the complicated play of emotions across her face before she continues. “But this one…well…after we decided it would be a duo now, I figure the Impala was better.”

“Can I ask why?”

She frowns and looks down at her hands. “The trunk’s massive, dude. It can hold a body if it has to.”

Michael steps back, a bit appalled---and for him that’s saying a lot---at her words. “Look, you want to get your inner superhero on, I’m not for that, but I can’t stop you so I’ll shadow you. But I’m not…Dad has huge rules on murdering humans and that’s not my deal. I don’t want it to be.”

Again, that’s Mom’s old deal. It was Uriel’s too. Gross on both counts, and see where it got them.

Besides, he knows Ella’s drowning, that the darkness is swallowing her up, and fuck that rat Pete. Michael has half a mind to go back to Los Angeles just to pay that bastard a very terrifying visit. He won’t because that’s Sam’s territory, but someone should. However, for all her fears and anger and loss, Ella seemed stable. He wouldn’t have pinned her version of vigilante justice as something that would include outright murder.

Ella’s eyes go wide, and she waves her arms in front of her. “No. I mean way no. I wouldn’t. I just want to take out any douchebags before they have a chance to hurt some unsuspecting girl at a club first.”

Michael’s still confused. “Then why do you need that much trunk space. You don’t have that many suitcases.”

Lopez offers him a small, sad smile, and he feels it again. That pity. He hates that look, especially from such vivid and soulful dark eyes. She doesn’t even realize she’s doing it; he’s sure. But she’s still the mortal here, and she doesn’t have to feel bad for him. He made his choices, took his chances, and lost his in his calculations against Samael and Amenadiel. He’s serving his sentence like the man he is (qualified term lately), and there’s no need to see teary eyes over it.

“Seriously, what for, Lopez?”

“I…if you take someone out to an alley and have to, uh, what are we calling what you do again?”

She’s beet red, and Michael somehow appreciates that, for once, Ella’s not just blurting out her random thoughts. Sometimes, they really can be insulting, even if she doesn’t mean them to be. After all, he’s not a _fear vampire_. The analogy is fair enough, but he’s…

He made the multiverse, the power of Creation deep inside him was fashioned by Samael to make shape and pattern and structure, but it was still his gift that fueled it. He’s not just a common monster now. He’s _not_.

“Michael?”

He takes a deep, even breath and regards her. “I don’t know. I just think of it as needing to feel better.”

“Okay, then, uh, when you need a pick-me-up,” she offers and it’s probably the dumbest euphemism he can think of. But at least it’s not called _feeding_. Even if, deep down, they both recognize what a predator he is now, especially Lopez. She’s the one who’s felt the brunt of it.

But he gathers himself together and continues anyway, “Alright so after a ‘pick-me-up,’ you want to shove some half-crazed man in the Impala’s trunk?”

“Well, if they pass out, we could maybe have the room to drop them off at the ER or a police station or something? I just figured extra room couldn’t hurt, right?”

Michael pinches the bridge of his nose and, even after months, it’s jarring to feel its new (could have been smaller still, Dad) shape. “Well, more room could come in handy for a lot of things. I’ll give you that, chica.” He sets his hand down and regards her, forcing himself to offer her a small smile. “Way to think ahead, I guess.”

The frown is still etched on her face, but he shrugs. There’s only so far he’s going to go to make her feel less awkward. It’s sweet in a way that she’s thinking about his needs. He just wishes they weren’t a factor at all, and it hurts in some way he can’t quite explain to know she’s been planning around his powers. His _punishment_. Because now that she’s _felt_ it, of course it’s the first thing Lopez sees in him.

Probably the only thing.

And he thought that they were what?

Going to be friends.

_Get real, Michael_. _Just keep her alive and Samael won’t end you. This isn’t a girls’ trip, and you’re not about to have slumber parties and pillow fights or whatever the fuck else._

It’s about survival.

“Cool, I…hey, let’s get the bags and get out of here. I don’t want to tempt fate longer than we have to, you know?”

He nods and hurries with her to her crap rental car. “Yeah, good point. Don’t want to leave Reno with a couple extra permanently catatonic police officers.”

“Michael---”

“It’s fine,” he snaps, feeling tired despite the earliness of the morning. “You’re driving, right, Scrappy Doo?”

“I hate that.”

“Tough, Lopez, if the nickname fits---”

Michael doesn’t anticipated the slap to his shoulder and Ella yips and shakes out her hand. “ _Mierda_! That’s like hitting granite.”

He smirks at her, even as he gathers up the heaviest of her luggage from the Mini-Cooper. “Angel of the Lord, chica. I’m tough; I told you.”

She shakes her hand out some but grabs a suitcase and both duffels. “Fine, whatever, oh angel, I’m still the one taking baby’s wheel.”

“For now. But yeah, let’s get a move on. If we hurry, we can hit Vegas for some easy money before we grab dinner. I heard the buffets there? Great deals!”

Ella mutters something to herself under her breath in Spanish. Fuck if he knows what. It’s _Sam_ who speaks everything and Amendiel who knows a myriad of written languages. Michael can guess by the tone that it’s not flattering.

“Hurry up!” He chides as he settles her stuff in the trunk. “And don’t roll your eyes, Lopez. You asked for this. You wanted this Bonnie and Clyde thing.”

“I was thinking more _Thelma and Louise_ but with less gorge jumping.”

“Yeah, we’ll avoid that,” he replies as she gets her own luggage tucked away and slips in behind the steering wheel. “No wings, remember?”

She nods. “Cool then, _Mikey_ , we’re off.”

“I hate that, Scrappy Doo.

“Whatever,” she snaps, and they’re off.

Michael figures it’s going to be a long seven hours plus to Vegas but as Ella lowers the convertible top and the wind rustles through his long hair, he finds, oddly, that he doesn’t even mind. That, maybe, just a little, he’s looking forward to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This car was kind of the inspiration for what they stole - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i80vsqJDcMo&ab_channel=RamblinAround


	5. Vegas, Baby, Vegas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella and Michael arrive in Vegas, and she has to set out some ground rules for herself too.

**Chapter Five**

Ella spends most of the drive talking. It’s her nervous energy and her reaction to these types of situations. She doesn’t know Michael and for all her sarcastic barbs, the woman---correction Lopez, _angel_ \---before her seems more than content to let Ella take the lead as far as on the road entertainment. She has the ground rules now, and even though she really wants to know all about Jesus and the Big Guy, especially, Ella works hard to blurt about them. It’s very weird to think that the Big Guy is Michael’s Dad, like literally. Then again, God made everyone but this is so much more immediate.

Besides, Michael has a point, if anyone asks her about her own mamí, well, as much as she cares about her mother, Ella also knows she has huge complaints about her too.

Sometimes, things are too personal, even if she wants to know so much about _everything_ , and she has the expert next to her. Well, as big an expert as she’ll ever meet until she’s dead. It’s heady.

However, she mostly keeps to talking about herself and her life in Detroit, her brothers, and then bits about her work in L.A., stuff from the cases that went well. However, she doesn’t want it to be more than that. She can’t and won’t talk about Pete, even if Michael’s more than seen her fears and fed from them. She has no illusions that Michael _knows_ everything about her and her ill-fated romance with the Whisper Killer. However, it’s too much to say out loud. She left to Reno to avoid her life back then, to leave forensics and everything behind. The good times she can talk about, but the rest she cannot bear to think about.

Michael nods and makes comments every so often, but often she’s doing a monologue on her own. If anything, her angelic (kind of) companion is focused on watching the landscape fly by on them with her stare intent and her hair whipping furiously in the wind. Ella has already offered Michael a couple hair ties and even a scrunchy (going old school) on the way. Michael tried after the third offer to take a rubber band. However, she seemed to flounder when they stopped at a gas station with pulling her hair back.

Could have been the rat’s nest the wind made it, but it’s also just one of those things you learn to do, and clearly Michael hasn’t had any experience with it.

Maybe a headband?

Ella will have to figure it out because the girl has so much hair and it isn’t completely convertible, top-down compatible. Or, at the least, it does look like Michael’s been shoved through a wind tunnel.

When they get everything settled, they’re only about a half hour from Vegas, and Ella’s glad because she’s been stiff for the last couple hours. She’s never driven this much in one day. Being stuck in L.A. traffic can take hours, but she’s definitely never joy ridden most of the day across a state. She’s going to have to make sure Michael can drive a stick for sure---and she is _not_ grinding Baby’s gears, damn it---so they can switch off. She’ll never make the next 2500 miles or more if they don’t/

Finally, Michael forces her attention from the road as the sun starts to set. “So, Lopez, what’s the plan when we get to Vegas?”

She giggles a little as Michael’s hair still twists and turns and tangles around her companion’s head. “First, we find a place and check in. Second? I figure we can save hitting the tables until tomorrow. Between savings and my winnings in Reno so far, I have about eight grand in the bank. What about you?” Her eyes widen. “Wait? Do you keep it all in your backpack? Do angels get bank accounts?”

Michael sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “This twenty questions might end up getting more intense than I thought, chica. To be fair, I know at least one angel on earth who’s chosen to live there just because. A brother who’s settled with a human of all things.” Michael shrugs. “There’s a fallen cherub I have run into named Gaudium too. Both, as far as I know, have legit enough papers and bank accounts somewhere. Well, at least my brother might? He’s pretty lucky to have a rich baby momma or so I’ve heard.”

Ella’s jaw drops open. “Holy crap! There’s a Nephilim? Those are a thing? Ooh so the Great Flood was sent because of tons of human-angel relationships like in apocrypha?”

Michael shakes her head. “Remind me _not_ to road trip next time with a former attempted novitiate.”

Ella blushes a little. “Well, it’s a lot. I never thought of the possibility there are like part-angels out there too.”

“They’re not.”

“Huh?”

“I suppose, technically, my brother’s child is Nephilim but so far that child’s the only one and appears completely mortal.” She shrugs. “It’s underwhelming. But no, the Great Flood was different, and my mother… _she_ never liked humans much.”

Ella almost swerves off the road at that and gets a dirty look from Michael for her struggle at the wheel. “Wait? What? You have a mom?”

Michael drums her fingers on the side door’s arm rest. “Once. She’s been banished to her own universe because the divorce was not a good one.” She offers Ella an oddly sympathetic smile. “I warned you that not everything about my father was wonderful. I personally think Mom went way too far trying to commit genocide. I don’t hate humans.”

“Really?”

She nods. “I just never thought about you much till, well, I got exiled. You’re not completely useless and, well, I had fun for a couple decades in New York when it suited me, but I have siblings far more attached to you guys than I am too. Mom…she was always pissed about the whole idea. But I didn’t want her damned and then eventually shuffled off to a universe none of us---even Dad---can reach.”

Ella wants to ask how that part’s even possible, but she’s not even sure she’ll understand. “Oh.”

“If Mother had just let it go…but she was so hard-headed and wrathful. She’s the most like my brother Samael that I know.” Michael snorts and looks back to the endless desert passing by them. “No wonder he got damned first and ended up running all of Hell.”

Ella blinks. “Oh, I thought---”

“Samael was his original name. He won’t answer to it, even now, not really,” Michael admits. “However, I gather the humans here have found many names for Satan. Pick whichever you like.”

She frowns and considers that as they pass a few cacti on the left. “The guy I worked with in L.A., the consultant, um, he was such an obvious method actor, but he went by ‘Lucifer.’”

For a moment, and it’s just a quick one but Ella’s sure it’s there…for a _moment_ something hurt and haunted passes over the angel’s features. “Yes, well, humans have their interpretation of so many things, don’t they? Lucifer is a bit much for the Devil, I think. He’s not a Lightbringer, not now.”

“But he was right? He made the stars?”

Michael rolls her eyes, and even if St. Michael is apparently newer to this form, she’s excellent at resting bitch face. “He fashioned them. _I_ made the raw energy and he shaped them to the constellations. It was a two-angel process. I suppose it still would be if he weren’t damned and I weren’t on probation.” She spits that last word out with more disgust than Ella thought capable to put on one word.

“Oh, wow. You did a good job then. The stars are really pretty. I think my favorite constellation is probably Cygnus. I mean, who doesn’t love blazing stars made to look like a graceful swan!”

Michael chuckles to herself but the tone isn’t as much happy as it is bitter. “Samael chose the design, but I’m glad the stars are up to snuff.”

“Ooh, did you guys invent spiders or did the Big Guy tell you to?”

“We had a lot of blue prints and rules. Dad’s big on micromanaging or He was long ago. I’ll admit that much. Some of the weirder stuff, Samael and I came up with on our own.”

“So spiders?”

“Nope, hate the things. I have had an endless number of encounters with humans where that’s _all_ I read off them. It gets boring, that arachnophobia thing.”

“Well, I don’t exactly love them, dude.”

Michael laughs again, and it’s less bitter and more relaxed. “Do you like koalas?”

“Ooh, I think they’re so cute. I mean, they have a lot of chlamydia, but they’re adorable.”

She snorts. “Well, they didn’t have chlamydia as an initial design. But back then, when we were doing Australia…well, we did that last and I think Samael and I were going a bit stir crazy.”

“Is that why most of it is all poisonous?”

“Maybe a little, but I thought the idea for koalas would balance it out.”

“Wild,” Ella says, not sure of what else to say.

The fact that the angel before her created half the universe is mind blowing. Yet, here she, so very hurt and forced to do things that clearly Michael’s ashamed of to stay in one piece. She bites her lip to keep herself from saying _I’m sorry_ because she knows that Michael can’t stand pity. That much has become obvious by now.

“Do you miss it?”

“Koalas and spiders?” She asks. “Not really.”

“Creating?” Ella probes as the city skyline comes into view as bright and glittering as ever. “Do you miss that, I mean?”

Michael nods. “I miss not just _taking_ , but that was literally _billions_ of years ago.” She sighs and tries yet fails to get a hand through her tangle of hair. “I’m a very different angel now. It was good to serve, to have a true purpose. I haven’t felt _that_ since the Fall.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, but I’m glad you find koalas up to snuff. I did unicorns too, but then Mom and her flood. I really regret they didn’t make it on the ark.”

Ella blinks and every fantasy she had at eleven is lighting up inside her even _brighter_ than the Vegas strip before her. “What? Those are real!”

“ _Were_ , operative term, Lopez. They’ve been gone for four thousand years or more.” She shrugs, but her right shoulder barely moves. It’s so stiff. “But yeah, they were my idea too. Took a while to get Samael to understand the idea. Uh, let’s just saw narwhals were a first draft.”

“Holy shit.”

The angel winks back at her. “Basically, but I’ve lived enough around mortals to know how banking works. I found a guy before I left Vegas the last time. I have an account and my savings in it. Between what I’ve been able to do in Vegas and in Reno too, maybe about twelve grand. I have about five hundred in cash on me. I think after we hit the tables tomorrow, we can really ramp that up.”

“Me too!” she enthuses, pulling off toward the older section of the city.

Part of her would love to just be indulgent, go to the _Bellagio_ or the _Hard Rock_ , but Michael has already nixed that idea. They’re going to be frugal, and Ella’s reminded of her Abuelo Jesús and how he was always clipping coupons and looking for the next deal. Michael may be many things, including the Angel of Fear, but she’s also kind of a cheapskate. However, they’ve settled on _Circus Circus_ , and Michael was thrilled when Ella looked it up on her cell at a pit stop that they could get a room together for under fifty bucks a night.

_Cielos_ , but it’s probably not going to be the difference in species and experiences that separate Ella and Michael the most as much as the angel’s quest to save a buck.

However, it seems easy enough to go along for now, but if this is _her_ big, once-in-a-lifetime road trip, then they are going to have to splurge on some places, really do the sites up well. Maybe Michael will feel differently after a couple days running the tables. Ella hopes she will.

“So,” Ella continues, honking at the traffic and cursing in Spanish at a complete moron of a driver who didn’t even use their turn signal. “Are _real_ vampires a thing? Cause, I admit it, I really liked _Twilight_ when the books came out and---”

**

The last few hours have not gone well.

Ella is having serious second thoughts about their big trip. At least, part of her wants to make this work, of course she does. Ella needs to make the voices stop and the nightmares, and she _always_ feels better when she’s out there in an alley, when she’s stopping another complete _pendejo_ from hurting someone else. It started as an accident in Los Angeles, just overhearing a scuffle on the far side of _Lux_ after leaving the tribe at girls’ night. It had been dumb to run into that alley, but she’d been there and had her taser out in a heartbeat. It had felt beyond gratifying to stop that pawing, grasping asshole from hurting some girl at least ten years younger than Ella.

And then it had become an obsession, and the biggest part of her flight to Reno and beyond there. Because if she was going to be a vigilante, then she couldn’t do it in her own backyard. Chloe wasn’t stupid and neither were Lucifer or Dan for that matter. They’d figure her out. She’d just needed a change. And even she could admit this, okay? Ella had fucked up in Reno. Without Michael she’d have been---

So, this arrangement had the bonus of safety. For both of them really. Michael might not want to admit it, but she was fragile in her own way too. Fuck, Ella had felt it, that pain and need and _hunger_ almost electrifying her when she’d held Michael’s hand at the club. The angel needed her own back up too.

But after a night in which they’d been stuck with a room with one bed and then gone to the buffet where, and no joke, Michael had dragged a Mary Poppins-style purse with her and started discreetly shoving food into Ziplock bags and then in there. Apparently, Michael was going to get her money’s worth. Technically, a security guard followed them on the way out and would have snatched the angel’s bag treats (and, dude, really?) but the guard also had an insane fear of snakes and had spent five minutes after accosting them both having a huge, attention-grabbing freak out.

Now they are back at their room, and Michael---who apparently has _no_ shame---is sitting at the desk and cataloguing her bounty before putting it in the hotel refrigerator as if nothing totally batshit had happened.

All this over mostly a mix of chicken fingers, egg rolls, and cake. Lots of cake slices.

Ella’s not even sure how much Michael _needs_ to eat, but the girl has a sweet tooth. Why does Ella suspect that her companion has a Celestial metabolism to go with her love for sugar? Would it be too much to hope that Michael can get fat just a little? After all, Ella’s _not_ the one who stole four slices of double chocolate cake from then buffet to save for later.

“You’re quiet,” Michael notes, even as she literally gets out a napkin and counts exactly how many chicken nuggets she’s secreted up here. “Something wrong?”

“Wrong? Are you serious? You won’t let us switch out the room for double beds---”

“There’s a ten dollar surcharge even though it’s the hotel’s error. That’s a rip-off.”

“We have almost twenty-one grand combined and we haven’t even gotten to gamble yet. And then you have to make a guard freak out at the buffet over snakes so you can steal half of it to our room! I’ve seen _mezquino_ before, but this is something else. I mean, you’re really cheap.”

“I like to save for a rainy day,” Michael counters as if this hasn’t all gone batshit---well more so---since they hit the Vegas city limits. “Besides, it’s the weekend so the buffet was an extra three bucks and they definitely owed us!”

Ella hops off the bed and starts to pace. “Okay, we need some ground rules.”

“Well, I thought we had them, chica,” Michael replies, finishing up her nugget count and then finally taking her ill-gotten gains to the fridge and stowing them away. “I thought they were great rules even: you don’t ask about my punishment, my dad, or Jesus Christ and we’re golden.”

Ella stops and turns to glare at the angel. “No, you got to set rules that make you feel better about yourself. I respect that. You don’t owe me everything about yourself, and I don’t owe you everything about my life either.” _Like Pete_. “But I have some rules too. I get it. Dude, I really get it. I grew up in an apartment with my parents and four brothers. I had a bunk bed with my brother, Ricardo, till I was like sixteen. It sucked. I know how to save, but there’s gonna be some basics. Okay?”

“I don’t understand,” Michael replies, stepping back from the refrigerator and sitting on the bed. She crosses one long leg over the other, and Ella swallows a little, realizing how tight the cut of Michael’s pants actually are.

_Nope, no good comes from that. I’m done with anything at all romantic ever. I just find disasters._

After all, who can top all other disaster dates than the literal Angel of Fear?

And yet, Michael’s even more attractive than Eve was, and, apparently in women, Ella has a weakness not for bad girls as much as acres of long, dark hair and huge brown eyes that look like something from a Disney movie.

_Yikes. Nope, that’s…focus on the anger. I have tons of that, should be easy._

“I’m not a complete bitch,” Ella counters, swallowing hard and it’s so hot in here suddenly. “I…look, Michael, there are some rules I want to set out on this girls’ trip for me too, okay?”

The angel regards her and narrows her eyes almost to slits. “ _Not_ a girl.”

Ella blinks and suddenly feels the flush of embarrassment spreading over her cheeks. “Oh, do you not…I guess in my head I mostly think of you as a woman because it’s hard not to see you and frankly think like Amazon princess or runway model.”

Michael’s eyes are still narrowed, and her chin is held so high that Ella can envision her on a throne somewhere, almost see the divinity thrumming through her. “Lopez, my other ground rule then, and I’ll hear yours out.”

She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re so generous.”

She still regards her with that regal, imposing posture, and it’s a lot to feel that focus completely n her…Ella can admit that. Michael gestures to her body and there is the first crack in her demeanor, the slightest darting away of her eyes from Ella’s. “This was done _to me_. It’s punishment and nothing more. It might be millions of years until Father fixes it, if He _ever_ thinks that I’ve earned a reprieve. I mean, who knows? Samael’s been waiting since the Fall, and he still shouldn’t hold his breath. However, I’m _not_ a girl. I don’t feel like one, and I’m not. So can we deal with that?”

Ella bites her lower lip and nods vigorously back at her…no _him._ “I’m sorry, Michael. That was…I’ll do better from now on. Not a single girls’ trip crack from me. We’ll keep it all Bonnie and Clyde.” She thinks better on that and fumbles her next sentence. “Well without the forbidden love affair and the dying in a hail of bullets. But you’re my guy partner in crime, gotcha.”

Michael nods at that and his posture relaxes. “Good then. Because three months out of about fourteen billion years of existence would be like a second for you as a guy, got it?”

Ella nods. “Yup, and I’m sorry before that---”

“I should have specified. But sure, I can handle Clyde in this partnership. I am still not sold on you being my Robin. I don’t…we will have to talk about the vigilante idea some time, Lopez. It’s a piss poor idea. I won’t even call it a plan because it’s _not_.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “We’ll negotiate for sure on that. I _need_ it.”

“You’ve obviously been through a lot, so you don’t know what you need.” Michael sighs and regards her with such deep, soulful eyes and seriously, Ella is not going to start falling for him. She is _not_. “I’m good, okay? I’m still even without my wings, an angel of the lord. But I can’t be everywhere all the time and accidents happen and what if a scumbag gets off one good shot. I’m _not_ my brother. I don’t have a way to heal people.”

Ella blinks. “Oh, right, Raphael.”

“Actually, both him and Samael…even now. I just don’t want you hurt.”

“And I want you to trust me, at least give me a chance out there. I’d been doing it for _months_ without you as my guardian angel, okay?”

“Alright, but before we go and do this, then we’ll do some training. Maybe when we hit Tucson, because it’s a smaller city, we’ll start. We do it my way.” Michael stands and steps close to her and Ella has to crane her neck to look into his eyes. Idly, Ella wonders how much bigger Michael was before he was punished because a six-foot girl is no slouch at all. “I trained the legions of Heaven and, it might have ruined me, but I was good at it. You want to go out? Well, we’re not going to just rely on the fact I can save you because sometimes I can’t.”

A smile spreads across her face. There are few things cooler than the idea of being trained to fight not just by an angel but by _the_ Saint Michael himself. Even if he currently is a cheap, bitter asshole who steals from buffets and cheats at poker. It’s still badass.

Ella kind of, maybe a little, squeals when she replies. “Oh my God! That’s so so awesome. I really want to do that!”

Michael rubs at his ears and winces. “Great, then be thankful at decibels that don’t blow out my ear drums.” He quirks his head at her. “What other rules do you have for me, chica?”

“Cheapness. I get it. You apparently love a deal. And I grew up super poor, dude, so I do understand, but there’s a difference between saving up, which we have to do because I get that moving to Atlantic City isn’t going to be cheap, but come on, _socio_. I am not going to smuggle leftovers into my purse from here to New Jersey. I am also so so _not_ getting your stink eye for leaving tips for the waiters.”

“It’s a buffet! You served yourself.”

Ella curses a long time in Spanish, and it’s gratifying to see Michael, the former Sword of God, take a step back at her fury. Good, she’s _not_ a push over. “That’s not the point. It’s embarrassing. I’ll be cheap most of the time, but not a total _mal educada_. I am not going to stiff waiters, and I am not going to shove random food in my purse!”

“But it’s already paid for!”

“ _Qué avaro!_ ” She shakes her head. “We’ll save some, and then sometimes I’m going to actually do things too. My money is my half and my take, Mikey, and so I get some say in it. So, seriously, trust a girl who grew up in Detroit and had zero dollars to her name. I can throw down and super save. But I’ve never been on a road trip before, and I’m going to have a blast. Please, you can shove buffet food in your big ass, Mary Poppins purse---”

“My what?”

“Never mind, it’s basically a backpack at this point. Anyway, when you do your super saver and way embarrassing grocery shopping with your purse, then you need to do that solo, _me entiendes_?”

Michael puts his hands on his hips and rolls his eyes. Seriously, guy has skills with being condescending to people. “Sure, but you’re missing out, Lopez. If you pay the twenty bucks, it should last you a couple days. I have extra Ziplock bags…”

She pinches the bridge of her nose. “But we have those ground rules. I won’t go setting money on fire---”

“Debatable if you don’t want to really milk a buffet.”

“But you’ll give me space to actually tip waiters, not run out of diners with stolen food, and, like, you know, not go an extra twenty miles to a different gas station with 5 cents less per gallon, which, dude, makes no sense after I’ve driven an extra twenty miles to find it!”

“See, what I’m hearing is you’re not open to cost saving.”

Ella shakes her head. “Do you think _maybe_ you’re here because you’re just too annoying?”

Michael sits back down on the bed. “In a way, I guess that’s true. I’m practical, Lopez. One of us has to be since you’re over here being Scrappy Doo to fight bad guys _and_ already planning a sight-seeing road trip where we’re just gonna waste our nest egg.”

“Maybe, but you want to do the Fear Angel version of dine and dash, just let me skip it, k?”

He nods. “Deal then.”

Then, Michael stands and goes to his duffle. There’s not much in there compared to Ella’s three suitcases, she’s sure, but Michael clearly has perfected the art of not spending money and packing light. Eventually, however, if they’re going out--- _once_ Ella convinces Michael to let her really patrol and set incels up---they’ll need to get him a more comprehensive wardrobe. And won’t he just bitch about the cost of that too. But more flies with honey and all that…

He pulls out a pair of boxers and a plain, white t-shirt, and she hears him yawn. Which, weird. Who knew angels yawned? Then again, assuming Rae Rae is really real and not her imagination, Ella has met a ghost who wears glasses, which is pretty strange too. So, who is she really to judge or even guess. But still, Michael’s yawned more than once by now, and it’s really later than Ella realized, and she’s bone weary too, especially from driving.

She shuffles to her suitcase and crouches by the neon green one with the leopard dots. It’s ugly as sin, but it’s so easy to tell apart at the airport. All her suitcases are bright and weird, things she found in various thrift shops in L.A. This one has all her jammy stuff. Ella’s pulled out her favorite sleep shirt, the one with all three Power Puff Girls on it in battle against Mojo Jojo, and turns to head to the bathroom to change.

Ella pauses a little when Michael’s just topless and in the process of shoving on his t-shirt. Her heart skips a beat and she strangles a yelp before booking it to the bathroom. Nope, didn’t see much and no different than getting changed backstage when she took dance as a teen. Nothing at all…well, except for the fact that her face is flush and a huge part of her wishes she could have stayed in their room. But nope; she needs to just focus. Focus and not think about long dark hair and pert breasts and tan skin and… _where_ was she again?

She shoves her sleep shirt on in double time and leans over, quickly brushing her teeth and taking extra seconds to splash water on her face.

Everything will make more sense when they hit Tucson. They’ll make sure they have double beds then, and Ella will get her inner existential crisis at least under enough control not to be all flushed and skittish around Michael. Poor guy is _clearly_ no more in the head space for that than she is.

She runs the water at the sink longer than she has to and adds an extra splash to her face, some of it hitting her bangs and long strands of the hair at the side of her face. _Come on, Lopez, focus on him being annoying at dinner. No problem after that._

“Hey! Scrappy Doo, I’m about to turn off the light and I know mortals see like crap in the dark. You coming?”

Ella stifles the most strangled noise before finally being able to talk. _Rayos_ , as if “coming” isn’t an operative term. “I’m good, uh, _un ratito no más_ , and I’ll be right out.”

“Whatever. I’m tired, can we hit the hay yet?”

She giggles at that, and maybe Michael really was here during the 1950s and 1960s, it’s _such_ a grandpa thing to say. Like that, the spell is broken, and she can see him as the grouchy, super cheap, and mostly annoying angel he is.

Ella swallows and walks back in the room and slips into her side of the queen bed. It’s kind of spacious, but Michael’s tall and all gangly limbs, so it’s not nearly as much space as even being a kid and sharing space with a cousin visiting at Christmas time or with her mom when traveling to dance competitions. But they’ll make do, right?

Michael slips in one his side and the bed dips and it’s all fine.

_Everything is perfectly normal, Ella. It’s no big deal. You’re just sharing a bed with a hot angel. Totally happens to everyone._

Yeah, fucking right.

Michael curls under the comforter and closes his eyes. That doesn’t last very long. Ella can’t help staring at him and feeling like this is one of the more surreal moments of a pretty weird life already. God, how come his eyelashes get to be so long and curly naturally. Seriously, Big Guy, how is that fair?

She must have been too weird for too long because the angel cracks open one eye and glares at her. “You good? I hear if you take a picture, it lasts longer, right?”

Ella rolls her eyes. Right, annoying. Michael’s good at that too. She feigns slapping his shoulder because she’s learned already the dude is made like granite underneath and it _hurts_ to hit him for real. “I’m fine. I…good night, Michael.”

He opens both eyes then and frowns a little, the motion making his scar stretch more dramatically over his face. It’s not as off putting as it has been, but it makes something inside her wince, especially because like his shoulder and his side, she knows that the _actual_ Devil probably put that all in place during the Rebellion. It must have hurt, and clearly Michael’s side still does.

“Chica…Ella, are you going to do that prayers before bedtime thing. I kind of had you pegged as that type. It’s okay if you do. I won’t take offense or anything. Obviously, a lot of people have better relationships with my dad than I do.” Michael laughs, and he probably doesn’t realize how bitter it sounds. After all, most of the time he’s totally like her brother Ricardo and gives off a “doesn’t give a shit” vibe. Ella has enough brothers to see through that. “Maybe everyone _but_ Samael does. But you can…I won’t hold it against you.”

Ella nods and curls up on her side to look at him better. “I don’t need to kneel and be showy. It’s more like a conversation with the Big Guy, just between me and Him.”

Michael frowns and the practiced sarcasm melts from his expression. “Do you ever hear Him back?”

“It’s not direct, but I think I get what I need most of the time, you know?”

“Even after everything in L.A.?” And his tone is quiet, curious.

Ella’s heart constricts in her chest, and it almost hurts to breathe. Almost. But she forces herself to keep talking. She will not break down in front of him, not again. “Maybe, you know? I mean, after all, I was going to get… _bad things_ were clearly going to happen to me in Reno, and you showed up.”

“I’m hardly a guardian angel, Scrappy Doo.”

“Maybe or maybe not. But yeah, me and the Big Guy is quiet, like a conversation I have running.”

“Understood.” He turns back on his side and closes his eyes. “Night, Lopez. Oh, seriously, what the hell are you even wearing? Is that a chimpanzee with a turban?”

“Dude! We are catching up on pop culture, promise.”

Michael doesn’t answer and soon after, Ella’s conked out beside him. When she wakes first in the morning, she tries to ignore the fact that in the middle of the night--- _somehow_ \---the grumpy angel beside her has tossed and turned and who knows what all else enough to end up wrapped around her.

And for the first time in a long time, Ella feels safe and shoots the Big Guy a bit of extra thanks for sending His wayward son to her.

Even if he’s painfully, painfully cheap.


End file.
